Focus

Global health, non-communicable diseases

Biography

Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, an internationally-renowned educator and qualified physician trained in global health epidemiology, has been appointed chair of Global Health at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work (Stempel College) at Florida International University. Dr. Chowdhury will lead efforts in developing a Department of Global Health that will open doors to research and educational opportunities that address health disparities and improve health access for people worldwide.  

Before joining Stempel College, Dr. Chowdhury worked as a professor of Global Public Health at the University of Exeter in England. Throughout this time, Dr. Chowdhury teamed up with Stempel College public health experts, participating in cross-collaboration research initiatives and events like this year’s COVID-19 Vaccines: A Global Experts’ Summit.  

Before embarking on his role at Exeter, Dr. Chowdhury worked at the University of Cambridge since 2008 and was promoted to reader/associate professor in Global Health at Cambridge in 2017. He currently serves as a country expert in the Global Burden of Disease initiative. In addition, he maintains adjunct roles as a professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland and Executive Director at the South Asian Centre for Non-Communicable Disease Research (CNCR) in Bangladesh.  

Dr. Chowdhury’s research interests focus on investigating how environmental, societal and biological factors may influence the risks and inequities of non-communicable disease worldwide. His scientific publications have received >60,000 citations (his current publication h-index is 66) and informed multiple global guidelines. His work has also received significant media attention, appearing in top-tier outlets like The New York Times, CNN and BBC. Dr. Chowdhury was elected a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology in 2021, a Fellow of the UK Royal Society for Public Health in 2011, and a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology in 2016. In 2013, he received the Bill Gates Senior Prize for contributions to global health.  

Dr. Chowdhury holds a doctoral degree in Public Health from the University of Cambridge, where he had the titles of Commonwealth Scholar and Gates Cambridge Scholar. Dr. Chowdhury also received advanced academic training in Global Health at the Harvard and Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health, in Global Nutritional Epidemiology at the Imperial College London, in Genetic Epidemiology at the Erasmus University Netherlands, and in Clinical Trials at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.