Celina Gounder is an American infectious disease expert, filmmaker, medical journalist, epidemiologist, and physician. As of 2021, she works at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and has global experience related to the HIV epidemic. Dr. Gounder was also selected as the third Indian-origin member of US President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board.
Wiki/Biography
Goode was born in 1977 in the United States (43 years old in 2020) to a French mother from Normandy and a Tamil Indian father from the small village of Erode in Tamil Nadu. Celine Goode graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology and then obtained a Master of Science from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2000. Between 1998 and 2012, she studied tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in several countries including South Africa, Lesotho, Ethiopia and Brazil. In 2004, she received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine. While pursuing her doctorate, she co-founded the International Health Group with Vivek Murthy (the 19th American Surgeon General of Karnataka origin), which helps doctors in training build their careers while helping people around the world. She served as an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Family and Race
Celine Goode’s mother is French from Normandy and her father is Tamil Indian from the small village of Erode in Tamil Nadu. Her father immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s to work as an aerospace engineer for Boeing.
Parents and siblings
Her father, Dr. Raj Nagarajan Gounder, an American aerospace engineer, added the name Gounder to his own name in the early 1970s, before Celine was born.
Celine Gounder with her husband and family in her hometown in Tamil Nadu
Husband and children
Her husband is Grant Wahl, a famous American sports reporter.
Celine Gounder and her husband in 2002
Celine Gounder and her husband Grant Wahl
Profession
Her first job was as a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, studying tuberculosis (TB) and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. She also served as the delivery director at the Alliance to Fight AIDS and Tuberculosis, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Later, she also joined the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, working to control tuberculosis in the city. She also serves as a medical journalist on the TEDMED editorial board, working on public health issues. One of the biggest achievements of her career was her appointment as a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Board to US President Joe Biden on November 9, 2020.
Dr. Celine Gounder
Facts/Trivia
- In 2017, she was named one of the “25 Women Changing the World” by People magazine.
- In 2018, she named the Raj Gounder Foundation after her father to promote education in her ancestral village, Thangavelu.
- Dr. Gounder is frequently invited to television news media programs to talk about health and medicine.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education