Sumana Chakravarty

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About

Sumana Chakravarty is a researcher working at the critical intersection of robotics, automation, and global health, with a focused specialization in advancing malaria vaccine production technologies. Her work addresses one of the most pressing challenges in infectious disease prevention: scaling up the manufacture of the promising PfSPZ malaria vaccine, which relies on sporozoites extracted from the salivary glands of *Plasmodium falciparum*-infected mosquitoes. Chakravarty has pioneered automated systems to replace labor-intensive manual processes in vaccine production, developing innovative mosquito pick-and-place systems and automated salivary gland extraction technologies that could dramatically increase production capacity and make this life-saving vaccine more widely accessible. Her foundational 2019 conference work laid the groundwork for the more refined 2020 system that has garnered 8 citations, reflecting growing interest from both the biomedical engineering and global health communities. Her 2021 contribution on automated salivary gland extraction further advances the production pipeline. Collectively, her research represents a vital bridge between precision engineering and public health, with the potential to bring an effective malaria vaccine to the millions of people worldwide who desperately need it.