CSDR TEAM
Arun Chaudhary is the managing director of the Center for Sustainable Development Research. An ardent advocate of socio-economic development for health equity, he holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Global Health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and MicroMasters in Data, Economics, and Development Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a co-founder and chief program strategist of Abiral Foundation and a board member of the Nepal Institute of Mental Health. Until recently, he managed Boston Medical Center’s clinical laboratory and coordinated a global health program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). At MGH, he helped establish ‘Strength and Serenity: Global Initiative to End Gender-Based Violence’ and continues to support the program as a research consultant. He is interested in health disparity, poverty, inequalities, welfare programs, and social policies.
Dr. Rakesh Ayer is the executive director of health research and evaluation studies at the Center for Sustainable Development Research. He completed his Ph.D. in Global Health from the University of Tokyo and is a global health scientist there. Dr. Ayer’s career spans over 10 years in the field of global health and has worked at the World Health Organization headquarters in Switzerland, the World Bank, UNAIDS, the Nepal Ministry of Health and Population, and Nepal Health Research Council. He has published extensively in several prestigious journals and is passionate about generating rigorous scientific evidence for effective health policy to achieve universal health coverage.
Gaurab Pant is the director of the environmental sustainability program at the Center for Sustainable Development Research. He leads the design of projects related to clean energy and environmental sustainability. He completed a Master of Science in Energy for Sustainable Social Development from Pulchowk Campus- Institute of Engineering and Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is a full-time mentor for A levels Science and undergraduate engineering students and has extensive experience in community and livelihood development projects in collaboration with national and international students and academicians. His expertise is in clean technology energy and product development based on local resources.
Dr. Shila Mishra is the executive director of economics research and development programs at the Center for Sustainable Development Research. She is a well-traveled and published scholar with a Ph.D. in Economics from the People’s Friendship University of Russia. For her previous research projects, she has collaborated with expert economists from the USA, Germany, and Russia. Before moving back to Nepal, she taught graduate and undergraduate economics and business management courses at her alma mater. Apart from her academic work, she has worked on several large-scale projects with large institutes like JWDC, UNDP, and UNICEF. Dr. Mishra continuously strives to integrate her research with community development. Despite growing up in Sarlahi, where gender issues are severe, her motivation to change the status quo led her to obtain a double master’s in management studies and international marketing and a doctorate in economics.
Suprich Sapkota is a senior consultant to the health thematic area at the Center for Sustainable Development Research. He completed his Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from École Des Hautes Études En Santé Publique, where he was a recipient of the MIEM Excellence Scholarship. He has more than 7 years of work experience in the field of public health, with core competencies in monitoring and evaluation, program management, planning and implementation, research, data analysis, training and facilitation, and proposal development. He also holds a full-time position at Herd International as a monitoring and evaluation manager for the Comprehensive Anaemia Programme and Personalized Therapies program.
Dr. Janet Nakarmi is a data scientist at the Center for Sustainable Development Research. She completed her Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2016 from the University of Mississippi. She subsequently joined the Univerity of Central Arkansas where she is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. Dr. Nakarmi’s research areas are nonparametric statistics, machine learning, and time series analysis.