Usha Ram, doctor of philosophy in demography and double masters in population studies and Economic is currently serving as a Professor in the Bio-Statistics & Epidemiology, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. She was awarded CIHR-Hope Fellowship by the Canadian Institute for Health Research, Canada. She worked at the Centre for Global Health Research, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Canada between 2011 and 2015. Prof Ram has coordinated several large scale demographic and health studies at the IIPS including first ever a sub-national study of Youth in India: Situation and Needs Study, Concurrent evaluation of national rural health mission, Family health and wealth study, Cause of death study in India. She recently developed district level factsheets for tribal health indicators being used by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, GoI for developing local policies and programs. She is currently the principal investigator of the “Exemplars in Global Health: National and subnational investigation of the drivers of success in maternal and new-born mortality reduction in India” in collaboration with the University of Manitoba, National Health System Resource Centre, and IHAT funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, India. Ram has mentored several candidates at the Ph.D., MPhil, and Master’s levels on a wide range of public health issues including road traffic injuries, mental health, non-communicable diseases including cancer, tuberculosis, sexual and reproductive health matters and rights, maternal and child health issues specifically among marginalized and minority communities.

Prof. Ram is the only serving faculty member at IIPS who appeared in the recently released ‘Indian Researchers who were Top 2% in 2019 – Stanford Study’. Her work on estimating childhood and adult mortality for the Indian district published in the Lancet Global Health has been widely appreciated and has been adopted by several countries, including Ethiopia, Mexico, and Brazil. Prof Ram has worked in several capacities for various international and national organizations including as consultant to UNFPA and is on Editorial/Advisory board of the Lancet EclininMedicine, and Canadian Studies in Population and a Governing Board members of ARPAN, an NGO working towards eliminating child sexual abuse in India. She served as External Review Committee Member, Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and Grand Challenges Canada (GCC): Stars in Gender Equality (Stars in Global Health Round 10) competition, 2018-19.

Dr. Ram has visited and presented her research at the several prestigious institutions and university including University of Toronto, Canada, MPIDR, Germany, John Hopkins University, USA, East-West Population Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, Netherlands, UNESCAP, Thailand, UN head office in New York, USA, University of Manitoba, Canada.