Chitra Maharani Saraswati
Research Officer
BSc, MSc
chitra.saraswati@telethonkids.org.au
Chitra is a medical statistician specialising in statistical programming and public health. She focuses on using data to address pressing public health issues and inform decision-making. She has broad research interests, but the common thread is leveraging data for some of the world's most urgent health challenges. Some of the problems she has worked on include:
- Generating synthetic contact matrices, which helps quantify the dynamics of communicable diseases, with the Infectious Disease and Ecological Modelling team at The Kids. She supported the development of an analysis pipeline for a software package.
- Quantifying the impacts of climate change and overpopulation on children's health with the Future Children’s Health team at The Kids.
- Monitoring and modelling childhood malnutrition globally as a medical statistician for the World Health Organization. Chitra supported country-level decision-making and contributed to the WHO-UN-World Bank’s Joint Malnutrition Estimates.
Chitra is also committed to the philosophies of open and collaborative research, enjoys interdisciplinary collaborations, and seeks better ways of communicating information. Outside of research, she enjoys hosting parties, writing, practicing yoga, and going on adventures.
Chitra can be found on chitra-ms.com and github.com/chitrams.
Education and Qualifications
- 2020: Master of Science in Medical Statistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, United Kingdom
- 2017: Graduate Diploma in Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield in Sheffield, United Kingdom
- 2016: Bachelor of Science in Quantitative Methods, University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia