Ruby Pawankar stumbled across Japan in 1988, when as a young physician in Pune, western India, she accompanied her Indian husband here to curate an exhibition held as part of the Festival of India in Japan.
Twenty-two years later as a professor in allergy at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, the Kerala native has her feet firmly set in Japan. Not only that, she is now at the pinnacle of her career in the field of allergies.
This month, she formally began her two-year term as the 22nd president of the World Allergy Organization, an umbrella group for regional and national academic societies of allergy researchers and clinicians from around the world. It's a position she was elected to in 2009, a position she says she wants to use fully to further advance education, training and research to help influence policymakers about rising allergy-related medical concerns in many countries.