Bhupesh Prusty is a Professor of Science at Rīga Stradiņš University, Riga, Latvia. Bhupesh’s schooling began in rural India, leading him to an academic career with a prestigious doctoral fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India. During his Ph.D., he studied the role of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) in cervical cancer development under the mentorship of Dr. Bhudev Das at the Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology. His doctoral work was recognized through several awards, including a Young Scientist Award in the Medical Science Section from the Indian Science Congress and the Shakuntala Amir Chand Prize from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) (2005).
Bhupesh was invited to join the laboratory of Prof. Harald zur Hausen, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008, at the DKFZ as a postdoctoral researcher. Bhupesh received the EMBO/EMBL Science Writing Prize during his postdoctoral work at Heidelberg, Germany. Bhupesh started his independent research career at the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany, under the mentorship of Prof. Thomas Rudel and Prof. Lars Dölken. Bhupesh was mentored by Dr. Dharam Ablashi, who co-discovered HHV-6 in 1986. Bhupesh’s groundbreaking work on HHV-6 pathophysiology has earned him several international awards, including the Best Trainee award and Koichi Yamanishi Young Investigator Award from HHV-6 Foundation, USA; the prestigious Experiment! research grant from Volkswagen Stiftung, Germany; Ramsay Research Award from Solve ME/CFS Initiative, USA. His innovative research ideas have been supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); HHV-6 Foundation, USA; Amar Foundation, USA; ME Research UK; Solve ME/CFS Initiative, USA; TEMPI Foundation, Austria; Helmholtz Center for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), Würzburg, Germany; Fatigatio, Germany; and Deutsche Gesellschaft für ME/CFS, Germany.
After earning his habilitation in Virology from the Faculty of Medicine, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany, Bhupesh recently joined Rīga Stradiņš University as a professor and opened a new laboratory to focus on the role of viral infections in the development of post-viral chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases.
