Officiating Vice Chancellor
Dr. M. Vishnu Vardhana Rao serves as the Officiating Vice Chancellor of the PHFI Institute of Public Health Sciences (Deemed to be University). He is also the ICMR Chair for Medical Statistics and the former Director of the ICMR–National Institute of Medical Statistics (NIMS), New Delhi.
A distinguished mathematical statistician and data scientist, Dr. Rao holds an M.Sc. in Statistics, Ph.D. in Statistics, and M.Tech. in Information Technology. With over three decades of experience, he has been actively involved in planning, executing, and analyzing large-scale community and clinical research studies in the domains of nutrition and health.
Dr. Rao’s research focuses on the development and application of innovative statistical methods for analyzing large and complex datasets. His work has contributed significantly to evidence-based, policy-relevant research in public health and data science.
He previously headed the Artificial Intelligence Cell at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and served as Administrator of the Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI)—a national online registry mandated by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). He has also served as an international consultant for UNICEF.
With over 150 publications in national and international journals and 20 technical reports to his credit, Dr. Rao has made substantial contributions to medical statistics and data analytics. He has guided numerous Ph.D. scholars in areas such as multivariate data analysis, meta-analysis, and statistical applications in artificial intelligence and big data.
Dr. Rao played a pivotal role in developing two landmark documents—
In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Rao has received several prestigious honours, including:
As Officiating Vice Chancellor, Dr. M. Vishnu Vardhana Rao provides academic, administrative, and strategic leadership to the University, guiding its efforts to strengthen evidence-based public health education, research, and innovation in service of national and global health priorities.
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