Trustee, Nepal Government Liaison and Outreach Lead
Iman Gurung grew up in the Himalayas near Gorkha, walking two hours a day to primary school. Iman left home at the age of eleven to join the nearest high school, situated a four days’ trek from his village. After high school, Iman won the Ministry of Education “State Education Scholarship of PR China” for a Clinical Medicine degree (MBBS) at Peking University. Following the obtainment of his Clinical Degree, he joined the European Neuroscience Institute researching Neuroendocrinology under Prof. Marjan Rupnik and Prof. Erwin Neher (1991 Noble Laureate in Medicine and Physiology). Iman was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and completed a PhD in electrophysiology studying membrane potential control of g-protein coupled receptors signaling from Cambridge University. This was followed by six years of Research Fellowship with Prof Christopher Huang, working on identifying the genetic and molecular bases of cardiac arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death.
Following the April 2015 earthquake, Dr. Gurung returned to Nepal. Through a cabinet decision by Prime Minister Sushil Koirala’s office, he was appointed a Special Advisor to Deputy Prime Minister/Home Minister Bamdev Gautam in charge of coordinating the rescue and relief operations of the National Disaster Centre. Currently, Dr. Gurung works as political, economic, and national security advisor to a number of prominent politicians, as an investor in different hydropower projects totaling 1000MW, and as the Chief Investment Advisor for the largest Industrial Park in Nepal (China-Nepal Friendship Industrial Park). He also runs a boutique consulting company building a nationwide geodetic GNSS real-time network in collaboration with the Department of Mines and Geology, Government of Nepal, and a small IT company developing different applications related to Value-added services and Cloud-based solutions to Nepal Telecom and Vodafone.
