Zinia is a teacher in medical education based in Kerala, India.  She works as Additional Professor at the Department of Community Medicine at Government Medical College, Kollam, Kerala. She is also a faculty at the School of Public Health, Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS). Zinia teaches Community Medicine to undergraduates and postgraduates, Epidemiology to students of M Phil in Clinical Epidemiology and PhD students at Kerala University of Health Sciences. She is an approved PhD guide at the KUHS. She is also a doctoral committee member at Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, SCTIMST, Kerala.

She has 18 years of experience of mentoring undergraduate and postgraduates in research in a wide range of areas including using qualitative research for program evaluation. She is also a seasoned researcher herself with expertise in infectious diseases research, particularly neglected tropical diseases. She started off working in Filariasis and later on Dengue. Her focus of research has been mainly in the epidemiology of dengue. She has a few papers related to economics of dengue as well. Besides she has worked on Tuberculosis and Rabies. She has a vast experience in the field of rabies prevention. Currently she has been sent by the Indian Government as part of a scheme from the Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Health research (Short term International Fellowship for Senior Indian Biomedical Scientist- 2023) for collaborating with LSE on doing a cost effectiveness analysis of “One Health” as an intervention for rabies prevention. 

A list of Zinia’s publication can be viewed here.

She is also a consultant in public health. She is a Global Assessor for the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, London, National Assessor for Effective Vaccine Management (National Cold Chain & Vaccine Management Resource Centre,The National Institute of Health & Family Welfare). She is member of several state level committees including  Kerala State Planning Board, Working group on Medicine and Public Health(14 th Five Year Plan),  the States rapid response team and HIV State Sentinel Surveillance team. 

Zinia has received the World Health Organisation Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR), Post Graduate Training Grants in implementation Research -2014, special appreciation award for research in dengue from IMA Kerala State in 2019, Dr.N.R. Roy award from the Indian Public Health Association in 2021. 

Expertise in teaching: Epidemiology; Infectious Diseases Prevention, Public Health; Nutrition

Areas of interest in research: Neglected Tropical Diseases, Dengue, Rabies, Tuberculosis,  Program evaluation, Economic Evaluation