Six Shining Lights: Dr Meru Sheel

Posted on 21 January, 2020

Canberra is a city brimming with high achievers—women who do incredible things on the local, national and international stage.

For our summer Magazine: Shine, we bring you stories of six local luminaries across a range of industries and find out what lights them up professionally and personally.

Dr Meru Sheel

Dr Meru Sheel is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Australian National University’s Research School of Population Health.

Her speciality is in health emergencies, vaccine-preventable and emerging infectious diseases and her passion lies in improving health outcomes for marginalised populations.

She loves spending much of her time working out in the field, responding to infectious disease outbreaks and emergencies.

Tell us about you…

I was born and raised in New Delhi, India. I left home at the age of 17 and moved to the beautiful university town of Manipal.

At 20, I moved to Brisbane—as an international student with two bags of too many clothes, and every single photo album I could pack.

How did you end up in Canberra and what do you think of the city?

I have kind of zig-zagged a bit—since Brisbane I’ve lived in Perth and Sydney, and I moved to Canberra to take up the Westpac Research Fellowship at the ANU.

Canberra is beautiful and I love being outdoors and accessing nature. I also love the coffee here!

What started your interest in the area of infectious diseases?

Growing up in India there was no shortage of seeing people have infectious diseases.

I had a close family friend who had polio—and everyone always said that she had missed a dose of the vaccine.

I knew someone who had died of Tuberculosis—these occurrences weren’t common but they weren’t unheard of either.

What was the pathway you followed into public health emergencies?

In 2016, I decided to study field epidemiology at the ANU, and very early on, I had the opportunity to be part of the public health response to Cyclone Winston in Fiji.

I was there for about seven weeks, and got to work on some really interesting issues and found it extremely rewarding…And having grown up in India, for me global health is improving the health of my people.

What are the greatest challenges?

From a personal growth perspective, a big learning experience has been understanding that if you want to be seen and heard you have to seek opportunities and speak up!

I think this is a challenge for women in general, but it is tougher for some who come from different cultures.

How do you separate work and life?

This is a big challenge for me (I suspect for many researchers), and have to work incredibly hard to do this. I am learning more and more that I need to do this.

I love running, and I try to make sure I make time for fitness. I find it’s one of the best ways to disconnect and clear my thoughts.

What are the biggest rewards?

I love training and mentoring others to nurture the best in them.

Of course, being awarded the Westpac Research Fellowship [in 2019] was a great personal achievement and then to be recognised as the winner for science and medicine for 40under40 is special. 2019 was a big year!

What do you love outside of work?

Running, and spending time with family (although bit challenging when they live in different parts of the world), catching up with my friends.

I love coffee, red wine and good food.

What keeps you up at night?

Finding funding to do the projects I want to do.

I love the work I do, and I am passionate about wanting to contribute to the field in a meaningful way.

MORE SHINING LIGHT PROFILES

Visit hercanberra.com.au/people for more Shining Light profiles.

PHOTOGRAPHY  Tim Bean Photography

This article originally appeared in Magazine: Shine for Summer 2019/20, available for free while stocks last. Find out more about Magazine here.

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