Not long into the COVID-19 pandemic, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford announced an agreement for the global development and distribution of a potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection from SARS-CoV-2.

Now, as senior director of external manufacturing operations at AstraZeneca, McMaster chemical engineering graduate Vimal Gandhi is leading the efforts to manufacture the potential vaccine and supply over 2 billion doses globally – at no profit during the pandemic.

His path to doing that life-changing work started in the early 1990s, when he was deciding where to go for university.

During his final year of high school in Cambridge, Ontario in 1991, Gandhi toured the McMaster campus and instantly fell in love with the diversity and warmth of the closed campus style.

“It felt full of life and energy and I knew I wanted to be part of that community,” he remembers.

It also helped that McMaster’s chemical engineering program was top ranked in the country with world-class research and faculty. He had always enjoyed the sciences, and “Chemical engineering embodied all of these into one discipline.” He knew a career in chemical engineering was highly sought after in many industries, which left the door wide open for career choices.

Gandhi enriched his degree by minoring in biomedical engineering and recounts that one professor in particular – John Brash – brought biomedical to the forefront for him. “He taught me how the two disciplines complement each other and encouraged me to open my mind to a medical or health-related pathway.”

To read more about Vimal Gandhi’s path to becoming the senior director of external manufacturing operations at AstraZeneca, go to the McMaster Alumni website.