Chetan Chitnis is Head of the Malaria Parasite Biology and Vaccines Unit and Director of INSERM Unit ParasitInnov U1347 at Institut Pasteur, Paris. He received a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990 and conducted post-doctoral research on malaria at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda from 1990 to 1995. He returned to India in 1995 to work at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in New Delhi where he established a group working on basic and translational research on malaria. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that enable malaria parasites to invade and multiply within human red blood cells. This information is used to develop vaccines and identify novel drug targets for malaria. In 2014, he joined Institut Pasteur, Paris as Professor in the Department of Parasites and Insect Vectors. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (2008) and the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi (2014). He was a Wellcome Trust Senior International Research Fellow (2000 – 2005) and Howard Hughes International Research Scholar (2000 – 2005). He received the Infosys Prize for Life Sciences (2010) and Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize for Medical Sciences (2004) for his work on malaria. In 2025, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) recognized him as a Distinguished International Fellow for his contributions to malaria and the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India.