Nithya Ramesh is the Director of Online Masters Programs, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, and a board certified public health dentist. A Brown alum (MPH ’17), she earned her degree in dental surgery from the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India in 2014 and holds a doctorate in oral biology, specializing in health policy and epidemiology, from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where she also completed a postdoctoral residency in Dental Public Health. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health and has completed several fellowships from prominent institutions, most notably the Global Health Fellowship from the Dartmouth College Global Health Initiative. With a decade of experience in program design, development and evaluation, Dr. Ramesh is a skilled educator and has been closely involved with Brown’s online MPH program since its inception in 2022. As the Academic Director of the online MPH program, Dr. Ramesh provides curricular leadership and oversight of academic affairs for the online MPH program.
As a dental public health expert, Dr. Ramesh's work focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to improving global oral health through education and technology driven solutions for workforce strengthening. Her grant-funded research include the development of augmentative communication tools for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities for use in clinical settings, and she has partnered with collaborators from the World Health Organization (WHO-AFRO) and national leaders from Sub-Saharan African countries to develop, implement and evaluate technology mediated education programs for dental workforce training. She has also served as an evaluation consultant on federally funded programs supported by HRSA, CDC, NCI, PCORI, and NSF, contributing to projects on health workforce development, cancer screening, STEM education, and care delivery reform.
Nationally recognized for her contributions to dental public health, Dr. Ramesh holds leadership positions within the American Public Health Association (APHA), where she serves as Co-Chair of the Policy Committee and Scientific Planning Committee for the Oral Health Section and was recently elected Governing Councilor. In 2024, she was appointed to be a member of the Special Commission on Oral Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Governor Healey where she contributes to state-level strategy and oral health workforce planning efforts. She has received numerous awards, including the Caswell A. Evans Award for her contributions to population oral health from the American Public Health Association, and the Lois Cohen Award for Outstanding Contributions to global health research. Prior to coming to Brown, Dr. Ramesh worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Program Design and Evaluation at Dartmouth College.