Professor Malabika Sarker is an implementation scientist and mixed-methods research expert. She is a physician with a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University, USA, and a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Throughout her distinguished career, she has taught across four continents and has extensive research experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. She is the Co-Founder of the Asian Society for Implementation Science.
Professor Sarker has secured more than US$10 million in research and capacity-building grants and has authored over 155 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters. She serves on several prestigious international advisory and governing bodies, including the International Advisory Board of The Lancet Global Health, the World Federation of Public Health Associations, the Medical Research Council, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research. She is Chair of the Advisory Board of the HRP Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening and serves on the Evaluation Advisory Committee of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. In recognition of her contributions to global health, Professor Sarker received the Heroines of Health Award in 2018.
Before joining the Brown University School of Public Health, Professor Sarker served as Professor and Associate Dean at the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health, where she also served as Acting Dean in 2015. She founded the Center of Excellence for Science of Implementation and Scale-Up (SISU), a pioneering initiative dedicated to advancing implementation research and capacity building.
Over her more than 30-year career in public health, Professor Sarker spent a decade implementing community-based health and development programs at BRAC, the world's largest non-governmental organization. Her work bridges research, policy, and practice, focusing on translating evidence into sustainable health solutions in low- and middle-income countries.
At Brown School of Public Health, Professor Sarker teaches two in-person courses: BSS 2710: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Death and Disability in the Global South and BSS 2727: Putting Research into Practice with Implementation Science. She also co-teaches two online courses: GPHP 2310: Interventions at the Local, National, and Global Levels and GPHP 2320: Evaluation of Public Health Programs.
Prof. Sarker is the recipient of a Brown School of Public Health Catalyst Grant and is a Co-Investigator on the NIH R01-funded HIV Enhanced Access Testing in the Emergency Department using a Systems Analysis and Improvement Approach (HEATED-SAIA) Cluster Randomized Trial.
