India's biotech queen Kiran Mazumdar elected to MIT board

India's biotech queen Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw got elected as a full-term member of the MIT Corporation, the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), her company Biocon announced on Thursday.

"Shaw is among the eight members who will serve the five-year term on the Board from July 1," said the city-based biotech firm in a statement here.

Shaw, 65, is a pioneer of the Indian biotech sector and founder-chairperson of Biocon, a global drug maker for affordable and accessible healthcare.

"I am honoured to be elected as a full-time member of the MIT Board and look forward to contributing to its journey of making a difference in solving challenges of the world," she said.

A first-generation entrepreneur and a thought leader, Shaw is ranked among the world's most influential people in bio-pharma by Fierce Biotech, Forbes magazine's 'World's 100 Most Powerful Women' and Fortune's 'Top 25 Most Powerful Women in the Asia-Pacific region'.

She has also been ranked number one in the Business Captains category on 'Medicine Maker Power List' 2018, an index of the 100 most influential people the world over in medicine where she has been among the top 10 since 2015.

"It is inspiring to be a part of a premiere research university like MIT, which is engaged in advancing knowledge, leveraging science and technology to address fundamental human needs for food, shelter, energy, transportation and social harmony," said Shaw, who holds key positions in educational, industrial and government bodies, including expert committees of the Department of Biotechnology and governing councils of its institutes.

She is also on the board of directors of the US-India Business Council and the board of trustees of the Keck Graduate Institute at California's Claremont.

Shaw was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2006.

She has established a 1,400-bed medical centre here to deliver affordable cancer care to patients of socio-economic background and a non-profit research institute dedicated to treating human diseases.

Shaw graduated from Bangalore University and has a master's from Ballarat College of Melbourne University in Australia.

Ranked among the world's leading universities, the 157-year-old MIT is an independent, co-educational and privately-endowed institution, with 1,000 faculty members, 11,000 under-graduate and post-graduate students and 130,000 living alumni.

--IANS

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