The Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Applied Studies (IDEAS) Initiative and the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health invite you to a hybrid seminar featuring Roksana Karim, MBBS, PhD an Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC, and AKM Fazlur Rahman, MBBS, MPhil, PhD, Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bangladesh University of Health Sciences, and Executive Director, Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh.

Dr. Roksana Karim joined the University of Southern California (USC) faculty in 2007; soon after receiving her doctoral degree in Epidemiology from the USC Population and Public Health Sciences (previously known as Preventive Medicine). She was trained as a physician in Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh. Her overarching research interest is women’s health. She has worked extensively on the impact of association of sex hormone concentrations with metabolic factors, atherosclerosis/cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and cognition. Dr. Karim also has vast interest in infectious diseases. She was an investigator in the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) and published on HIV-associated endocrine and cardiovascular complications in women participating in the WIHS. Dr. Karim teaches courses on ‘Research Methods’, ‘Intro to Epidemiology’, and ‘Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases’ for the USC undergraduate and MPH program. She initiated a STI screening study in pregnant women in Bangladesh. Dr. Karim worked on multiple NIH-funded studies and has published over 75 peer-reviewed original articles in well-respected journals.   

Dr. AKM Fazlur Rahman is the Executive Director at the Centre for Injury Prevention, Health Development and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB). Dr. Rahman also has also been working as Professor of Epidemiology, Bangladesh University of Health Sciences in Dhaka. Before joining the present post, he worked in the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Child and Mother Health, Dhaka, Bangladesh in the capacity of Associate Professor. He has been working in the field of Public Health for more than 35 years. He completed his PhD from the department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska University, Stockholm, Sweden in 2000. He developed injury surveillance methods for low-income countries. Dr Fazlur served as Regional Public Health Advisor for Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh for COVID 19 management. He has been involved in many infectious disease research including ‘Capacity Assesment for Response to Infectious Diseases of Public Health Importance in Bangladesh’.  He has published more than 300 scientific articles on public health issues including injury prevention in various peer reviewed journals. He has presented several papers as keynote speaker in several conferences on various public health issues including maternal and child health. He is also one of the editors of WHO-UNICEF Child Injury Report. While serving as guest faculty at various universities, such as the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in Bangladesh, Karlstad University, Orebro University, and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, he supervised seven PhD students and many MPH students.