Dr. Jayanta Bora is a distinguished professional in the fields of statistics, demography, public health, and data science. Currently holding the position of Founding and Executive Director at VART Consulting(P) LTD in Mumbai, he brings extensive expertise to the realms of child health, child mortality, demographic research, and data analysis. Dr. Bora serves as a mentor, imparting knowledge in research methodology, demographic techniques, and data science to researchers, Ph.D. scholars, and faculties. His teaching utilizes various tools, including M.S. Excel, STATA, SPSS, Power BI, and programming languages like R and Python.
With a background in training and research, Dr. Bora has been affiliated with prominent institutions such as the University of Economics and Business (WU) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna. His international collaborations underscore his commitment to advancing knowledge in his field.
Dr. Bora’s professional journey includes significant contributions to development projects with organizations like IIPS, and PHFI, and participation in research related to reproductive and child health care, HIV/AIDS intervention programs, and the WHO Global Ageing and Adult Health Study (SAGE). He has worked with organizations like TNS International and AON on various social and market research projects, offering technical assistance and expertise in research, monitoring and evaluation, and data processing.
His academic prowess is evident through the publication of over 30 research papers in reputable national and international journals, including Lancet Global Health, Asian Population Studies, PlosOne, Genus, and others. Dr. Bora actively engages in conferences and seminars, presenting his work and contributing to the academic community.
Dr. Jayanta Bora’s commitment extends beyond research and teaching; he serves as an academic reviewer for leading international journals and holds the position of academic editor for PLOS ONE & PLOS Global Public Health Journals. His dedication to capacity-building training and research programs reflects a broader commitment to the dissemination of knowledge and skill development in his field.
An acclaimed academic, author, editor and former professor of economics and education at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Binod Khadria is renowned for his works on international migration and diaspora studies. His first book, The Migration of Knowledge Workers (Sage, 1999) based on extensive field-surveys in India and the US under the Time of India award 1992 and a senior Fulbright American Fellowship 1995 had brought in a paradigm shift in the discourses on brain drain. He is the co-editor of World Migration Report 2020, the biennial flagship of IOM-UN Migration. Recently, Professor Khadria has been elected as the President of Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism (GRFDT), a think-tank and a consortium of researchers and policy maker from across the world.
Dr. Choudhury worked as a Professor and HOD in the Statistics Department, Gauhati University. He also served as an Honorary Director PRC, Guwahati, and Dean of Faculty of Science, Gauhati University. He has about 60 research papers published in various national and international journals and 3 books authored for degree students having Statistics as a subject. Also, he has guided 15 Ph.D. scholars during his service time.
Shri Hiranya Borah retired as a DDG (Joint Secretary) from the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India on 31st March 2022. He was also a lecturer at Cotton College in 1985 before joining as an ISS probationer. Incidentally, he was the first Ethnic Assamese ISS officer. He is a man of vivid experiences derived from his official postings across the country, travels across India, and numerous visits outside India. He is presently staying in the NCR. He has published more than 190 eBooks and has published 17 English 2 Assamese books in print so far. Apart from writing books, he is also a motivational speaker for youngsters.
The high point of his literary career came when after receiving a copy of his book, ‘Chandraprabha: The Iron Lady of Assam’, the Hon’ble PM of India tweeted from his tweeter handle about the book and his tweet was re-tweeted by around 4000 viewers within hours of his tweeting.
Dr Nandita Saikia is a Professor in Public Health and Mortality Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai. Currently, she is the Head of the Centre for Online and Distance Education, IIPS. She was an Assistant Professor in population studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi where she taught in 2013-2021. Nandita Saikia served as an Assistant Professor at the Population Research Centre, Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) in 2011-2013.
Nandita Saikia completed a Master’s in Statistics from Gauhati University, Assam, and M Phil and Ph.D. from IIPS, Mumbai. In her Ph.D., she spent substantial time at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Germany, one of the finest places for research in mathematical demography in Europe and the world. From 2017-2019, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.
She has been visiting scholars in several prestigious institutes/universities across the globe. She traveled to 22 countries for academic work. At present, Prof Saikia is serving as a member of the prestigious “Technical Advisory Group” members of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
Prof Saikia’s research interest lies in formal demography or mathematical & statistical relations between demographic measures; mortality and cause of death studies using life tables; socio-economic and regional inequalities in health; disability analysis; quality of demographic data and undocumented immigration; demography of Tribal Population.
Professor Saikia has published extensively as a lead author on population health issues in internationally reputed journals, such as Lancet Global Health (impact factor 38.92), The WHO Bulletin, PlosOne, Population Studies, Demographic Research, Population Space and Place, EPW, JBS, SSM-Population Health, Tropical Medicine and International Health, BMC journals, and many others. She also contributed chapters to several edited books. Her co-authored book “Adult Mortality in India: Trends, Socio-economic Disparities and consequences” was published by Springer in 2023. She received several national and international awards. Nandita Saikia is an associate editor of the Journal of Population Research, Springer, and academic editor of PLoS Global Health.
Dr. Misra is a graduate in Medicine and specialized in Public Health and Tropical Infectious Diseases. With around 28 years of experience in Public health and disease control, he has served as the Director and Senior Management for different organizations. He has extensive and varied experience working with the Government of India programs, (NACO, NVBDCP,CTD, NHM etc), UN agencies (World Bank, UNAIDS, Global Fund) International organizations (Futures Group, Clinton Foundation) and DFID and USAID supported programs. He is well-versed in the Indian health situation and the National Health Programs in India. As team lead for various large-scale pan India Public health programs, he has implemented large-scale pan India programs for different donor agencies. He has been engaged as Team lead for different large-scale projects notably, Global Fund –Rd 7 and Rd 9, the ART rollout and the pediatric ART rollout (with the Clinton Foundation), the Data Utilisation Study in the Indian health sector for the World Bank, the DFID TAST for HIV prevention and the USAID PIPPSE project for the Private sector and the TSU projects.He has been extensively involved in different pan-India capacity-building programs for health and other staff on for different diseases and programs.
Completed Master Degree From Gauhati University, Assam. Mr Parag is a social science researcher,Field management and Field monitoring in various social and market research Projects. He was associated with in Population Studies from International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai in various project like Dristrict Level Household and Facility Survey(RCH), Ce_NRHM Project, DLHS-4, NFHS-4, LASI, SAGE and NFHS-6. He also engaged other project like Economic Survey, PFC Evaluation of Assam, LGG project at Arunachal Pradesh, Population Council of Delhi,GirlsSurvey, SDS (Sesta Development Services), Handloom Survey In Tripura , Reach India Pvt. Ltd. Service Centre Manager, Guwahati.He has completed Six ToT from International Institute for Population Sciences Mumbai and given Training to the participants in many project. Project Management, Mass level Monitoring & Supervision, Training and Orientations (LASI, NFHS-3, DLHS-4, NFHS-4,NFHS-6 and other training ANM, ASHA, AWW and other Health worker). He is also involved in developing methodologies for individual case studies and write the report of case study. He also has experience in data analysis with Development Sectors (Govt. Org. & Pvt. Partners) in SHG framework, Field team management. Team budget planning etc. He also develop Monitoring & Evolution tools, Data management and assistance in Reports writing.
Dr Ankita awarded Ph.D. degree from CSRD, Jawaharlal Nehru University for the thesis, “National and Sub-National Projections of Aging in India: A Probabilistic Approach.”She is a statistician with interdisciplinary training in population studies investigating the various research problems related to public health, aging, maternal and child health, statistical and applied demography, analysis, and projection of demographic components such as fertility, mortality, and spatial analyses.She has acquired a strong background in scientific research and have continuously been involved in various research activities through employment, undergraduate and graduate-level research, and volunteer consulting work. She was the recipient of two Gold medals in M.Sc. Statistics and Master in Population Studies (MPS) respectively. She was a research analyst at IIASA’s Young Scientist Summer Program (YSSP) 2018 June – 31, August 2018 in Laxenburg, Austria. She has attended many International conferences and workshops, De Ankita has a good knowledge and familiarity with statistical programming tools like SPSS, STATA, R, and Spatial software like GeoDa & QGIS.
Ankita Hazarika, Research Associate
Ankita Hazarika is a Public Speaking and Creative Writing Expert at PlanetSpark with over 1.5 years of data field research experience. She holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Linguistics from Gauhati University. Ankita has taught as a guest lecturer and private tutor and has worked as a Research Assistant on an ICSSR-funded project. She received the Dr. Ambedkar National Merit Award for her academic excellence. Proficient in Microsoft and language tools, she speaks English, Hindi, Assamese, and Bengali, and is learning Punjabi and Nepali. Ankita is also passionate about creative writing and has actively organized cultural events at various educational levels.
Shraddha Bhatia, Research Associate (Intern)
Shraddha Bhatia is currently pursuing her Phd in Economics. She has qualified JRF and is working in the area of public health. Having completed her Masters in Development Studies from IIT Guwahati and Bachelors in Economics honors from University of Delhi, she holds immense interest in research and data analysis. She aims to pursue a career in research.