Rashidul Haque, Ph.D.

Rashidul completed his Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1985 from the Sofia Medical Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria and PhD in Medicine from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1988. He joined icddr,b in 1989 and received postdoctoral training from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College, London, UK in 1990.  He has over 30 years of research experience in the field of enteric infections, especially enteric parasites such as malaria and leishmaniasis and has managed longitudinal cohort studies in Bangladesh in collaboration with the investigators from the University of Virginia, USA.  Rashidul received an international research scholar award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), USA for the period of 2001-2005.  Early in his career, he focused on pathogenesis and diagnosis of amebiasis and other enteric parasites and also established a Parasitology Laboratory at the icddr,b. His early work revealed that another enteric parasite, Cryptosporidium, also has an important impact on child health, and so more recently he expanded his research to include Cryptosporidium, as well as other enteric infections.   During the last decade, Dr. Rashidul has been involved in malnutrition and child development research at the icddr,b, Dhaka, Bangladesh.   He has conducted field studies and clinical trials for treatment of parasitic diseases in Bangladesh.  Currently, he is also working on enteric diagnostics, gut function, interactions of infection and childhood malnutrition, and on the biological mechanisms of underperformance of oral vaccines and child development including brain imaging.  He has been involved with the multi-site studies such as MAL-ED, PROVIDE, and WASH Benefits (funded by the Gates Foundation) in various capacities at the Bangladesh sites. He is a life member of Bangladesh Medical Association, Bangladesh Society of Parasitology, American Society of Microbiology and Honorary International Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). He has published over two hundred papers in peer reviewed scientific journals.

Fahmida Totail, MBBS, Ph.D.

Dr. Fahmida Tofail is a scientist and senior consultant physician, working at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) since 1998. Besides regular patient management, her research focused is on maternal and child health, with particular interest in child’s neuro-cognitive development, behavioral development, child maltreatment and abuse, parenting, maternal mental health and on maternal and child nutrition. She is also involved with developing integrated, sustainable and feasible developmental interventions for the high-risk children in the community. Her work is also addressing big challenges like changing maternal behavior and eliminating poverty that affect child development and nutrition. Currently she is involved with 7 different clinical and community-based research projects in different capacities.

She is a faculty member of Early Childhood Development course at BRAC, MPH program at James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University and diploma courses of Dhaka University and Teacher’s Development Institute, Bangladesh. She is a fellow at RSTMH, an enlisted reviewer of JHCPU and has more than 50 scientific publications at peer-reviewed journals. She obtained her MBBS from Bangladesh, and PhD from the Centre for International Child Health, UCL, UK. She has her fascination for painting, playing music, singing and traveling. She tries to utilize hear creativities in her works; particularly those are related to psychosocial-stimulation.

Masud Alam, MBBS, MPH.

Dr. Masud completed his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (M, B, B, S) degree in 1999 from Rajshahi Medical College under Rajshahi University, Bangladesh and MPH from State University, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2014. He received post graduate training in adult medicine from Rajshahi Medical College in 2002 and clinical fellowship training at icddr,b in 2003-2004. He joined icddr,b in 2004 as a project research physician  and he is currently working as a Project Research Manager. He was awarded a New Researcher Award Program Grant from the Thrasher Research Fund, USA in 2006.  He has 5 years of clinical work experience involving management of communicable and non-communicable diseases in adult patients and children, working with management of malnutrition, diarrheal disease, and respiratory illness, particularly in children. He has more than 12 years of clinical research experience including conducting longitudinal preschool and birth cohort study on ameobiasis in Bangladesh as well as longitudinal birth cohort of cryptosporidiosis in children in Bangladesh with collaboration of University of Virginia. He has worked in the clinical trial on underperformance of oral polio and rotavirus vaccine in developing countries (PROVIDE) to understand the cause of oral vaccine failure in developing counties. He completed an Advanced Vaccinology Course in 2012 from CMC, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. He has also been working in the BEAN since 2015 in collaboration with Boston Children Hospital, USA after receiving extensive training measurement techniques.  Recently he has become involved in clinical trials on dengue vaccine in collaboration with University of Vermont and a drug trial to treat parasitic infection in adults in collaboration with the investigators from University of California San Diego, USA. He has more than 15 peer reviewed publications.

Shahria Hafiz, MBBS, MPH.

Shahria Hafiz (Medical Officer) has been working at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) since May 2003 in different projects. She completed MPH from National Institute of Preventive & social Medicine (NIPSOM) on 2008 with major on maternal and child health and completed her MBBS from Bangladesh.  She has been a co-investigator of the BEAN study since 2015 and has received specific study related training from Boston Children’s Hospital in 2015 and 2017.  Her particular areas of interest have always been child’s neuro-cognitive & behavioral development, as well as maternal & child health related issues.  She has been involved with several cohort & clinical trial study at icddr,b and has experience as co-author of a few papers in reputed journals.  She has also been highlighted in the Nature news feature on how poverty affects the brain (July 12, 2017) Dr. Shahria is also currently a PhD student of Bangladesh University of professional (BUP). Her thesis is on “Functional activities of brain of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder in Bangladesh”.