Our Staff

Dr Laura J Reichenbach, ScD, is currently Dean of the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Director of the Centre of Excellence of Science of Implementation and Scale-Up. A social scientist by training, she holds a Doctorate of Science from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and brings over two decades of research, management and leadership experience in global health, designing and implementing high-quality research to improve the delivery and uptake of proven health interventions across a range of public health and development issues, with particular expertise in sexual and reproductive health, family planning, and maternal and neonatal health.

Dr Reichenbach's research expertise spans implementation science; qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods; project evaluation; and policy analysis. Her specific areas of research include social and behaviour change, family planning and unintended pregnancy, maternal and neonatal health, cervical cancer, sexually transmitted infections, the intersections of reproductive health and poverty reduction, human resources for health, and gender. She has more than 12 years of residential field experience in South and Southeast Asia, designing, leading, managing and implementing applied research to generate actionable evidence for improved health and development outcomes, alongside professional experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

As Dean of the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, Dr Reichenbach provides overall strategic leadership and administration for the School, ensuring success across its four pillars of research, teaching, training and advocacy, and fostering its reputation for impact in global health through globally competitive grants and high-impact scholarship. In her former role as Senior Associate at the Population Council, she served as Project Director and Principal Investigator of Breakthrough RESEARCH, USAID's USD 54 million global flagship social and behaviour change research and evaluation project, leading a consortium of five partners and overseeing more than 50 research activities and 100 studies across 19 countries. Previously, as Director of the Center for Reproductive Health at icddr,b in Dhaka, she provided scientific and administrative leadership to a team of more than 100 scientists and staff, and earlier served as Deputy Technical Director of The Evidence Project, USAID's USD 35 million flagship implementation science project for family planning and reproductive health.

An accomplished fundraiser, Dr Reichenbach has successfully raised and facilitated research funding from a range of donors, including USAID, DfID (now FCDO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She brings extensive teaching, academic advising, training and mentoring experience from roles at the Harvard School of Public Health and as Adjunct Faculty at the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the editor of two books on reproductive health and human rights, and gender and the health workforce.