Research

From taking care of my cancer-stricken grandma Nini at 8 to being bedridden from COVID myself at 17, I've grown a passion for solving health problems through research. In the last few years, I’ve been extremely fortunate to develop skills in data science and machine learning at the New York Genome CenterGoogle, and Nobel laureate Joachim Frank's lab at Columbia University. Now, I'm working as a researcher with Professor Luis Gravano under Columbia’s Computer Science Department, developing ML models to identify foodborne illness hotspots in restaurants and inform the NYC Department of Health’s public health policies to reduce illnesses around the city. Prior to that, while leading analysis on COVID-19 data for the Bangladesh Ministry of Health, I co-authored several publications on statistical modeling of disease dynamics with researchers and epidemiologists at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Cambridge.

For more information, here’s my Google Scholar page.

Papers, Publications & Conferences

July 2024

Geospatial and Geosocial Dimensions of Foodborne Illness as Reflected in Yelp Restaurant Reviews

Shaveet, E., Chowdhury, S., Hsu, D., Gravano, L.

Forthcoming. Accepted to 2024 International Conference on Social Media & Society.

June 2023

Risk factors for COVID-19 mortality among telehealth patients in Bangladesh: A prospective cohort study

Sania A., Mahmud A. S., Alschuler D., Urmi T., Chowdhury S., Lee S., Mostari S., Shaikh F. Z., Sojib K. H., Khan T., Khan Y., Chowdhury A., el Arifeen S.

PLOS Global Public Health (2023)

June 2022

Modelling how face masks and symptoms-based quarantine synergistically and cost-effectively reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Bangladesh

Ferguson E. A., Brum E., Chowdhury A., Chowdhury S., Kundegorski M., Mahmud A. S., Purno N., Sania A., Steenson R., Tasneem M., Hampson K.

Epidemics, 40, 100592 (2022)

July 2022

A Novel Method for the Extraction of Fetal ECG Signals from Wearable Devices

Chowdhury, S., Frasch, M. G, Wu, H., Lucchini, M., Shuffrey, L. C., Sania, A., Malette, C., Odendaal, H. J., Myers, M. M., Fifer, W. P, Pini N.

Presented at the IEEE 44th International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Glasgow, Scotland (2022)

May 2022

Combining Rapid Antigen Testing and Syndromic Surveillance Improves Sensitivity and Specificity of COVID-19 Detection: A Community-Based Prospective Diagnostic Study

Chadwick, F., Clark, J., Chowdhury, S., Chowdhury, T., Pascall, D. J., Haddou, Y., Andrecka, J., Kundegorski, M., Wilkie, C., Brum, E., Shirin, T., Alamgir, A. S., Rahman, M., Alam, A. N., Khan, F., Swallow, B., Mair, F. S., Illian, J., Hill, D. L., … Sania, A.

Nature Communications, 13, 2877 (2022)

April 2021

Participatory syndromic surveillance as a tool for tracking COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Mahmud, A. S., Chowdhury, S., Sojib, K. H., Chowdhury, A., Quader, M. T., Paul, S., Saidy, M. S., Uddin, R., Engø-Monsen, K., & Buckee, C. O. (2021).

Epidemics, 35, 100462 (2021)

June 2022

Modelling how face masks and symptoms-based quarantine synergistically and cost-effectively reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Bangladesh

Ferguson, E. A., Brum, E., Chowdhury, A., Chowdhury, S., Kundegorski, M., Mahmud, A. S., Purno, N., Sania, A., Steenson, R., Tasneem, M., & Hampson, K.

Epidemics, 40, 100592 (2022)

May 2022

Use of fetal ECG in the assessment of fetal cardiac rhythm

Chivers, S., Ovadia, C., Regan, W., Zidere, V., Sharland, G., Vigneswaran, T, Rosenthal, E, Luccini, M., Pini, N., Chowdhury, S., Fifer, W. P., Simpson, J. M., Williamson, C.

Accepted for Oral Presentation to the 19th Fetal Medical Foundation World Congress (2022)

April 2021

Surging COVID-19 in Bangladesh driven by B.1.351 variant

Brum, E., Saha, S., Sania, A., Tanmoy, A. M., Hooda, Y., Tanni, A. A., Goswami, S., Al Sium, S. M., Islam Sajib, M. S., Malaker, R., Islam, S., Sarker, N., Saha, S. K., Chowdhury, S., Haddou, Y., Ferguson, E., Kundegorski, M., Purno, N., Tasneem, M., … Hampson, K.

Submitted to Lancet Global Health (2021)

April 2021

Modelling to inform the COVID-19 response in Bangladesh

Ferguson, E. A., Brum, E., Chowdhury, A., Chowdhury, S., Kundegorski, M., Mahmud, A. S., Purno, N., Sania, A., Steenson, R., Tasneem, M., & Hampson, K.

Submitted to Lancet Global Health (2021)

November 2018

Characterizing Noise in Whole Genome Cell-Free DNA Analysis

Chowdhury, S., Schulman, R.

Landau Lab, New York Genome Center / Weill Cornell Medical Center. Submitted to Regeneron STS (2018)