Sanjay K. Jain, MD

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Jain is a Professor of Pediatrics, Radiology and Radiological Science. He is also a Professor of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. His areas of clinical expertise include pediatric infectious diseases, tuberculosis / mycobacterial infections, and international health.

Dr. Jain serves as the director of the Center for Infection and Inflammation Imaging Research and is a member of the Center for TB Research at Johns Hopkins. He is also the Vice Chair for Basic & Translational Research for the Department of Pediatrics and the principal investigator for the Pediatric Infectious Diseases NIH T32 award that supports the fellowship program. 

Born in Halifax, Canada, Dr. Jain grew up in India. He received his medical degree in 1999 from All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, where he was a house officer in neuroradiology. He trained in pediatrics at Penn State Children’s Hospital, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a clinical fellow in pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins before joining its faculty in 2005. Dr. Jain was named an associate professor of pediatrics in 2011 and professor of pediatrics, radiology and radiological science in 2017.

The major focus of Dr. Jain’s research is on pathogenesis of infections, with a special emphasis on bacteria and high-containment pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (causative agent of tuberculosis) and recently SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Jain’s laboratory utilizes small animal models and cutting-edge molecular imaging technologies to develop and test novel radiopharmaceutical imaging methods (CT, PET, SPECT, MRI) to study disease pathogenesis as well as to develop precision medicine tools for the diagnosis and monitoring of infections. They have the unique capacity to image animals infected with high-containment pathogens (up to biosafety level-3). Several novel tracers developed in his laboratory are now being tested in first-in-human studies. Dr. Jain is also involved with developing innovative technologies to improve childhood immunizations and health of young children in the developing world.

Dr. Jain is funded through several NIH and other grants. Notably, he is also the recipient of the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2009) and the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (2014). Dr. Jain is the founding member and past chair of the Infectious Diseases subgroup and current board member of the World Molecular Imaging Society. He serves as a reviewer for multiple scientific journals and NIH study panels.