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Abhik Das RTI Expert Headshot
Experts

Abhik Das

Distinguished Fellow, Biostatistics

Education

PhD, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health

MS, University of Wyoming

BSc, University of Calcutta

Abhik Das is a Distinguished Fellow in Biostatistics. Having led the Data Coordination Center for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network (NRN) for 16 years, Dr. Das is an expert in modeling, analyzing, and interpreting public health data. He has a wealth of experience in the design of intervention studies, including randomized clinical trials, and he also provides statistical expertise in neonatology, substance abuse, health insurance coverage, diabetes, and maternal and child health.

Since 1999, Dr. Das has been providing biostatistical leaderships for multicenter clinical studies in neonates. As the Principal Investigator for the Data Coordinating Center for the NRN, he helped design, implement, monitor, analyze and publish 30 plus multicenter randomized controlled trials, 20 plus observational studies, and 200 plus publications in perinatology that have informed clinical practice. Dr. Das has designed and analyzed studies in perinatal settings spanning a variety of designs, including Bayesian, pragmatic comparative effectiveness, comprehensive cohort, factorial, cluster randomized, phase II and pharmacokinetic studies. He has a wide range of experiences in a variety of areas, including studying near-term and neurodevelopmental morbidities, fetal alcohol effects, effects of prenatal substance use on development, pharmacologic interventions under investigational new drug application, and international trials in maternal-infant nutrition.

Dr. Das is a member of the Society for Pediatric Research. He serves as the Associate Editor for the American Journal of Perinatology. Additionally, he is a reviewer on several journals, including JAMA Pediatrics and the Journal of Pediatrics. Dr. Das is also a reviewer on several study sections and data and safety monitoring committees associated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, and more. 


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.


Abhik Das in front of the Taj Mahal in India

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.”

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