Abhik Das
Distinguished Fellow, Biostatistics
Experts
Education
PhD, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
MS, University of Wyoming
BSc, University of Calcutta
Get To Know Abhik Das
Dr. Das resides in North Potomac, Maryland, located outside of Washington D.C., with his wife, an FDA Program Manager, and his teenage son. He shared his experience with his first job, working at RTI, and learning from impactful mentors.
Before joining RTI, my first paying job was a student internship in India where we surveyed face-to-face municipal workers in various parts of Great Kolkata as part of a field survey for the Midterm Evaluation Project of the Calcutta Urban Development Program sponsored by the World Bank. The experience gave me an idea about the hopes, aspirations, and fears of low-paid ground-level public health workers in urban India, and the impact small initiatives may have if done right. It sparked my lifelong interest in public health.
The best thing about working at RTI is the people I work with. I’m surrounded with earnest, sincere, and kind people who want to do the very best and are invested in the project’s mission. I feel blessed that I get to work with some of the best minds in the field and continue to learn so much from them all the time.
I have been very fortunate in finding wonderful mentors at RTI. Now both sadly departed, Drs Vijaya Rao and Ken Poole were my mentors from the very early days, pushing me to be my best and giving me extraordinary opportunities (both technical and in terms of direct face time with influential clients and external collaborators). Largely through their daily examples, they taught me how to handle high-volume multicenter research with equanimity, perspective, and grace.
Inspirational Quote
Rabindranath Tagore wrote this poem about 19th century India colonized by the British, but somehow it still seems extremely appropriate for the USA of today:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
More From Abhik Das
Related Projects
Neonatal Research Network (NRN)
Improving the health of premature babies through support for clinical research
Related Capabilities
Get in Touch
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