Rumana Akhter Saifi, MSS, MA, MPH (Epid-Biostatistics), PhD (Demography)

Area of Interest: Demography, Implementation Research, Population and Reproductive Health, Epidemiology and Bio-statistics

CAREER SUMMARY: I come with 17 years of experience in research, teaching, and research administration. I am a Faculty at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine Faculty of Medicine (FOM), Universiti Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My present teaching portfolio at FOM includes (1) Medical statistics (2) Research Methodology (3) Practicum in Health Research Ethics (4) Qualitative Inquiry In Public Health (5) Ethics, Law, and Health (6) Principles and Methods of Social Epidemiology and (7) Implementation Research. Over the years, I have also been developing and teaching courses on the Philosophy of Health Systems and Health Policy Research, Applied Statistics in Social Research, and Time Series Analysis. I am committed to expanding the local reach of Implementation Science and have been serving as a Faculty Scholar for the Malaysian Implementation Science Training (MIST) program, a collaborative effort of UM and Yale University, US.

As the former Head and Associate Head of CERiA: Centre of Excellence for Research in Infectious Diseases and AIDS. Faculty of Medicine (FoM), Universiti Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I have overseen the entire research portfolio of CERiA. CERiA has been the leading Centre in Malaysia conducting HIV and infectious disease-related research in various fields including bio-medical, social-behavioral, clinical, and implementation research. In my role, I have overseen the progress of research projects starting from grant writing to IRB submission, to data collection, to analysis, to dissemination, ensuring efficiency and smooth workflow. Additionally, my responsibilities include review of grant agreement(s) to ensure compliance; review of financial statements; and preparation of financial audit, and program reports. During my time at CERiA, it has been identified as the most productive research centre of the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya that conducts innovative and interdisciplinary research combining epidemiological, biomedical, and socio-behavioral approaches, focusing HIV prevention and treatment in key populations.

With an excellent academic background, I started my career with ICDDR, B in Bangladesh. I stood 9th in Secondary and 6th in Higher Secondary Examination in Dhaka Board, Bangladesh. Over time, I specialized in mixed-method research. My major research expertise includes designing and conducting primary research projects, monitoring of outcomes, evaluation of programs, scaling-up interventions, analyzing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data, designing and conducting large data collection surveys, managing and analyzing large data sets, and data trend analysis. For the last 17 years, my research focus has been on population health and health policy across diversified cultural contexts from cross-border areas of irregular migrants to conservative Muslim rural areas to urban metropolitan to urban slums to hard-to-reach areas; and across various disadvantaged population groups from young adolescents in early marriage to men who have sex with men (MSM) to sex workers to transgender to injection drug users to prisoners to fishermen. Working in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and New Zealand for the last 17 years gave me the opportunity to understand both developing and developed country settings. I’m acting as a faculty member of the Master of Health Research Ethics Program, jointly developed by Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, and the Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center. I’m acting as a faculty scholar on a Fogarty Science of Implementation Training program jointly developed by Yale School of Public Health and Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, and Universiti Malaya, Malaysia which ultimately aims to create a regional implementation research center hub in Malaysia.

My academic background is a blend of Demography, Public Health, Epidemiology, and Social Science. I hold a Doctor of Philosophy in Demography and Masters in (1) Public Health (Epidemiology and Bio-statistics) (2) Population and Reproductive Health Research and (3) Social Science.