In Memoriam: Chitra Dinakar, 1966-2020

Chitra Dinakar, clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, died in late March at the El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. She was 54 and had suffered from cancer.

Dinakar was born March 10, 1966, in Bhilai Nagar, a city in central India. She graduated at the top of her class from the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, one of India’s most competitive medical schools. Dr. Dinakar completed a residency in pediatrics at the MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, followed by a fellowship in allergy and immunology at the Cleveland Clinic. In 2000, Dinakar was hired at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, where she worked until coming to Stanford.

Dr. Dinakar arrived at Stanford in 2017 and became clinical chief of allergy, asthma and immunodeficiency. By the fall of 2019, had established Stanford Health Care’s allergy, asthma, and immunodeficiency clinic in Atherton, the institution’s first such clinic for adult patients.