A changemaker in global health
Kaushik Sarkar is an award-winning strategy leader spearheading AI innovations and digital transformation within the health and environment sectors. Currently, as the leader of the Institute for Health Modeling & Climate Solutions, he focuses on expanding digital cooperation, strengthening data governance, enhancing decision-making capacities, and orchestrating large-scale systemic transformations to address the most pressing global health challenges induced by climate change. He also serves as the institutional PI and chief technologist for intramural R&D of high-end technologies. Over the past 15 years, Kaushik has advised governments, the private sector, and prominent donors in advancing precision programming with digital public goods and orchestrating end-to-end digital transformation within a whole-of-governance approach. His vision extends beyond immediate technology innovations to shaping a future where public policies, services, and operations become profoundly resilient to tackling global issues like climate change, epidemics and pandemics, food and nutrition insecurity, and economic disparities leveraging the digital quad of blockchain, IoT, Cloud Services, and Artificial Intelligence.
Kaushik’s Experience
Igniting ideas
It all begins with an idea. Great ideas are not the most complex ones. Simple innovations have helped humanity survive and thrive for centuries and have made our species incredibly resilient.
Advancing solutions
Challenges are many, and so are the ideas to solve them. But, an idea becomes a solution, when there is a felt need and absorption capacity. To build those demands and capacities, it is essential to support governance and mobilize investments.
Building future
The most critical enabler of a solution is political buy-in. The people’s representatives are the makers of the future of a nation and their understanding of the development issues, local or global, is a quintessential driver of felt need and demand at scale.
Progressive bipartisan policies and value-based systems that support the scaling of a solution for public welfare are built on the pillars of science diplomacy and data-for-development.
Degrees & Certificates
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Kaushik completed his doctoral studies in Community Medicine (Public Health Medicine) from The West Bengal University of Health Sciences. He was awarded the university Gold Medal for securing highest aggregate in the doctoral examination.
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Kaushik completed MBA for Executives (specialization in Business Analytics) with Distinction from the SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).
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Kaushik has done the Global Master of Data Science from Deakin University with High Distinction.
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Kaushik completed his PGP in AIML with Excel grade from the University of Texas at Austin. His industry capstone was on Natural Language Processing (NLP), where he secured a perfect score (100%).
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Kaushik completed his MBBS from the Medical College, Kolkata. He was a National Merit Scholar in 2004 and secured the prestigious Short Term Studentship of the Indian Council of Medical Research in 2007 for his research on multi-transfused children
Big Data Engineering
Python
Health Economics
Management Dashboard
Biostatistics
Behaviour Change Intervention
Digital health disruptions breaching access barriers
Malaria Prediction & Planning Toolkit
Kaushik designed MPPT as an end-to-end AI-powered SaaS platform to digitalize surveillance, automate data profiling, processing, and analytics, and visualize disease hotspots, forecasted trends, and service performances. Today MPPT helps over 300,000 people with timely access to improved diagnosis, treatment, referral, and other health services.
DISHA Android App
Data Integrated Solutions for Healthy Futures with Artificial Intelligence (DISHA) is a one-stop mHealth solution having 22 different features, including geo-mapping, geofencing, user profiling, chatbot, online surveys, recommender system, and many others to revolutionize frontline health services and disease reporting. It is open-source, integrable, and flexible.
Malaria Mapathon
One of the most compelling challenges of applying computer vision in predicting disease hotspots is the unavailability of labelled earth observation day. In collaboration with Cognizant, Kaushik led the roll out of household labelling in OpenStreetMap to enable high-resolution risk mapping using advanced computer vision algorithms.
Bite Ko Mat Lo Lite Campaign
During the early days of the pandemic, all febrile illnesses took backstage with the exception of COVID19. At Malaria No More India, Kaushik instrumented the BKMLL digital campaign to educate over 180 million Indians on the urgency of preventing mosquito-borne diseases. BKMLL improved health-seeking and personal protection behaviour and emerged as one of the global digital health best practices in raising community awareness.
Open-source Community Environment
Open source communities and platforms are the core elements of accelerating innovation of the 21st century. At the Institute for Malaria & Climate Solutions, Kaushik leads a community of practice of 35 scientists working to create advanced weather-based early warning systems across 13 different countries. Today, the community is working towards establishing a cross-cutting discipline at the intersection of global health, climate change, and big data.
Ok Google, …
Today, Android holds over 95% of India’s mobile OS market. Recognizing the reach, we at Malaria No More launched the Malaria No More on Google Assistant to help users with information on malaria, its symptoms, prevention tips, treatment protocols, among other aspects, using virtual bot assistance. Kaushik led the information workflow of the virtual assistance to ensure users have access to the most credible information.