Faculty & Staff

Professor Kurpad is the Former Head of the Department of Physiology at St John’s Medical College and Division of Nutrition at St. John's Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London), National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS), Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Karnataka Science and Technology Academy (KSTA), and of the International Union of Nutrition Sciences (IUNS). He has been awarded the prestigious Wellcome Trust - India Alliance Margdarshi Fellowship in 2015. He completed his MBBS, MD and DNB in 1988 from St. John’s Medical College and his PhD from Bangalore University in 1992. After stints as a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rowett Research Institute, UK, and at the Dunn Clinical Nutrition Centre in Cambridge, UK, he returned to St. John’s at the Department of Physiology and set up a stable isotope and physiology unit to work on protein and amino acid requirements. During this period, he primarily worked on accurately measuring human amino acid requirements. In these studies, he set up a definitive, accurate stable isotope balance method to measure amino acid homeostasis in humans. That provided the basis for the 2007 WHO/FAO/UNU Expert Committee (he was the rapporteur of that committee) revision of the protein and amino acid requirements. He subsequently expanded his interests to define a new dual stable isotope method to measure protein digestion and quality, and established a micronutrient research group with interests in iron, calcium, vitamin B12 and vitamin D, as well as in public health aspects related to these nutrients. He was President of the Nutrition Society of India from 2012 to 2016 and is the current President of the Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society. He is the Chairman of the ICMR Expert Committee on Nutrient Requirements of Indians; THR evaluation sub-Committee of the Karnataka DWCD Nutrition Policy Group; State Level Technical Expert Group of Uttar Pradesh for formulation of strategies to reduce maternal and child mortality; member of the Scientific Committee of the FSSAI, Apex Board of DBT, Governing Board of NABI, Mohali, and the Technical Board of Nutrition at NITI Aayog.

In 2002, he was appointed the Founding Dean of the St. John’s Research Institute, a position he stepped down from in 2011. He has written over 520 original papers and is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He is a Section Editor of the Encyclopedia of Nutrition and co-author of the Asian Edition of Guyton’s Textbook of Physiology.

Bibliography URL: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=s73SohMAAAAJ