Dr. Rupa Banerjee is a senior consultant gastroenterologist in the department of Gastroenterology and the Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) center at the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, Hyderabad, India. She is also the director of IBD research with the Asian Healthcare Foundation, Hyderabad. Dr. Rupa established the first dedicated IBD center of excellence in India in 2004. She has designed and maintains a 6500-patient database and biorepository for the center detailing the demographics, type and course of disease and response to treatment. The center has adopted a large cluster of villages(mandal) for screening for IBD including blood & endoscopic evaluations and treatment free of cost. Her primary focus has been optimal & affordable multidisciplinary care of IBD. She is involved in research on inflammatory bowel disease in Asia focusing on the epidemiology, microbiota, & genetic profile of this population for optimizing and individualizing the management. Dr. Rupa has initiated the IBD-ENC (IBD –Emerging Nations Consortium) with over 20 countries South Asia, Middle East and Africa to promote collaborative work on IBD in this part of the world. She has been the key person to design the interactive web platform for the IBD-ENC(www.ibdenc.org) for IBD news, latest publications, discussing challenging cases and having the unique provision of development of personal IBD registry for members.