Vinayaka Prasad, Ph.D., is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. His research focuses on how viruses (e.g., HIV-1) exploit chemokines to regulate cellular endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery to promote virus replication fitness and how viruses trigger neuropathogenesis in the brain. 

Prasad received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and did a post-doctoral stint at Columbia University. Prasad is the founding and current Program Director of HIV/AIDS Institutional T32 Grant, which is currently in its 29th year. He has been mentoring the early-stage investigators in their HIV/AIDS research careers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine through his role as Developmental Core Director of Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY Center for AIDS Research. He was also the Program Director of the Einstein AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) for 14 years (2000-2014), building AIDS research capacity in India, Rwanda and Bangladesh. For over 30 years, he has also been the course director for graduate courses on viruses at Einstein. 

Prasad is the minireviews editor for mBio, an editor in Scientific Reports and an associate editor at AIDS Research and Therapy. Prasad received an NIAID merit award, he was elected as fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has served as chair of the AIDS Drug Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics (ADDT) study section for 2 years. He has served on over 75 National Institute of Health study sections during his career.