Sunil Kumar Ahuja

Sunil Kumar Ahuja, M.D. (born March 13, 1961) is a professor of Medicine, Microbiology, Immunology & Biochemistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and an expert on the role of immunogenetics on HIV pathogenesis.Dr. Ahuja is also the Director of the Veterans Administration Research Center for AIDS and HIV-1 Infection.His most recent work, first published in the 2005 issue of Science, involves the ethnic group-specific role of CCR5 haplotype and CCL3L1 gene copy number on the progression of HIV to AIDS.

Sunil Ahuja received his medical degree from the Armed Forces Medical College India in 1983.Following work towards a M.Sc. degree from the University of Alberta in Canada, Dr. Ahuja had his internship and residency at the SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn.

Sunil Ahuja's research has been published in many high-profile peer-reviewed journals, including Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sunil Ahuja has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including being named in 2001 the Elizabeth Glaser Scientist and the Burroughs Wellcome Clinical Scientist in Translational Research.In 2005 he also was the recipient of the MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.Less than 5% of NIH-funded researchers receive this award.

In February 2008 Dr. Ahuja was listed as one of 35 people that will shape our future by Texas Monthly magazine.

Some of Sunil Ahuja's work has been questioned by the scientific community.In July 2008 Sunil Ahuja's group reported that Duffy antigen receptor for chemokines (DARC (gene)) influenced HIV/AIDS susceptibility.This finding was then questioned by four groups of scientists, reporting the failure to replicate. Sunil Ahuja replied to the questioning in the same issue of Cell Host & Microbe.