Public Health Foundation of India

Aastha Aggarwal has a Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology from University of Delhi. She has research interests in genetic and epigenetic epidemiology of chronic conditions such as cardiometabolic diseases, mental health outcomes, cancer and others. She has experience of working in various epidemiological studies, including a population-based transgenerational cohort, a hospital based case-control study on respiratory disorder, a study linking cancer registry data with population based cohorts, and others. She has contributed significantly in setting-up of genetics laboratory and bio-respository at PHFI and also oversee its functioning. The facility has enabled in-house processing of various types of samples such as whole blood, blood spots, saliva etc for genetics work, and their systematic storage.

She also teaches as guest faculty at IIPH-Delhi. She is facilitating ethics review process at PHFI in the capacity of Member Secretary of PHFI-Institutional Ethics Committee.

Currently she is working on her Wellcome Trust- DBT India Alliance Early Career Research Fellowship. As part of the study she is looking at comorbidities of cardiometabolic conditions and depression in adult Indian population to examine their temporal associations, and various risk factors including psycho-social factors. This work will also generate resource for exploring biological mechanisms of these conditions in future. Previously, she has been a recipient of various fellowships funded by Wellcome Trust and Indian Council of Medical Research, along with receiving University medal in Master’s program from University of Delhi.