Prof. Datin Dr Indra is a world renown entomologist working on vectors of medical importance with 40 years of experience. She has worked at Ministry of Health, Institute of Medical Reseach, Malaysia and Environmental Health Institute, Singapore prior to joining Universiti Malaya in 2011. She graduated with a Phd from the Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya in 1983.
At UM she was instrumental in designing and seeing through the establishment of the Arthropod Containment Level 2 Laboratory (ACL2) at Department of Parasitology. This facility is the only one at the university and it allows work on mosquito infection.
Indra has been key person playing a vital role in spearheading many projects on vectors of malaria and dengue. She was the pioneer to incriminate the vectors of Plasmodium knowlesi in the current era and was responsible for establishing that P. knowlesi was also found in humans from all states in P. Malaysia. Her work will be the road map for the next generation of malaria parasites which will be affecting humans after the elimination of human malaria.
She has also established a new proactive paradigm for dengue surveillance, where infected mosquitoes are detected before cases are reported. A cluster randomised control trial proved the effectiveness of this paradigm. Thus, a proactive tool for the prediction of dengue epidemics in the country has been established.
She has obtained many local and international grants while serving UM. She has supervised 11 PhD students (two with distinction) and three MSc students to date. She has published more than 180 articles of which majority in the past decade has been in ISI Tier 1 Journals. She has published 2 books and 12 book chapters.
In recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of parasitology and tropical medicine in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, she was awarded by the Malaysian Society of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine, the Sandosham Medal in 2006. In 2017 she was awarded Malaysia’s Research Star Award for outstanding national research in Tropical Diseases by the Ministry of Higher Education. In December 2025, the Society of Medical Arthropodology, India conferred upon her the SOMA Global Leadership award for her outstanding contributions to the understanding of malaria and dengue transmission in South Asia.
Indra has been appointed a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Vector Biology and Control since 1998. She was appointed a WHO malaria consultant for Lao PDR from 1999 to 2002. She has been appointed as temporary adviser, WHO on many occasions. She was appointed as member of the WHO Vector Control Advisory Group (VCAG) on New Tools for vector control (2013-2016).
She was the Editor of Tropical Biomedicine from 2006-2014 and was responsible for obtaining the ISI status from Thompson Web of Science. It is the first local medical journal to obtain impact factor in the country. She was the subject Editor for an international journal Parasites and Vectors from 2016-2020.
She has been cited by Stanford University as one of the top 2% scientists for the years 2022-2025 in her field of expertise. Top 2% scientists in career- long.
