Thsti - Translational Health Science and Technology Institute

M.D. (Pediatrics),Gujarat University, B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad
Diploma in Pediatrics, Gujarat University, B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad
MBBS, Gujarat University, B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad

Dr Wadhwa trained as a pediatrician and after practicing for a few years, transitioned to become a physician-scientist. She has been doing clinical research for more than a decade and leads her research programme at THSTI. In her initial years as a researcher at AIIMS-New Delhi, she was involved with the conduct of hypothesis driven studies that evaluated interventions directed at several commonly occurring infections in children in India. She was groomed in the skills required for conducting rigorous and meaningful research. In 2010, she joined Translational Health Science and Technology Institute as a physician-scientist. She has been associated with several large multi-centre clinical trials using zinc for treatment of various childhood illnesses, surveillance for H-influenzae B in tertiary hospitals, establishing a large cohort of pregnant women to find solutions for adverse pregnancy outcomes, and observational studies to understand the development and maturation of the neonatal immune system. Her primary research interest is finding solutions for neonatal and early life morbidity and mortality. She is the PI for a large multi-country multi-centre clinical trial to measure the efficacy of adjunct zinc for the treatment of young infant sepsis and co-PI on another large multi-country multi-site clinical trial to test the efficacy of immediate continuous KMC in reducing neonatal mortality.

She has been instrumental in establishing a large longitudinal cohort of pregnant women with the primary aim of building risk stratification algorithms for adverse outcomes and is overseeing the conduct including all aspects of data management of the cohort. She has demonstrated ability to establish, maintain and follow population and hospital cohorts with high quality data. Her core expertise lies in design, conduct and analysis of hypothesis driven multicentre hospital based clinical studies. She has built and lead multisite, multidisciplinary research teams that are capable of performing research to the most exacting standards of good clinical and ethical practices and to use risk and decision science for clinical medicine and public health.

She has authored many publications including one in Lancet and has co-authored chapters in text books. She has been credited with the development of revised Consensus guidelines for the management and treatment of diarrhoea in children for NRHM (2006 & 2007) as member of National Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) and Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition (2006).

Clinical Development Services Agency (CDSA): Since 2017, she has been associated with CDSA as its faculty in-charge. She has extended her scientific training and analytical thinking to grow CDSA and establish it as an academic clinical research unit where the focus is on academia-led, multi-centre, clinical trials/studieson public health issues of national importance.

Data Management Centre (DMC):Instrumental in establishing the data management centre (DMC) at the Pediatric Biology Centre (PBC) and later of the translational research program at THSTI. Lead the data management for all clinical studies being conducted and coordinated by PBC.

She supported the organization in establishing the Institutional Ethics Committee for Human Research and in the registration of the IEC with CDSCO. Was a member secretary for the THSTI IEC for the first few years.

Teaching:Leads ‘Quantitative Methods in Research’ and ‘Clinical Trials’ modules, for PhD taught course at THSTI since 2016. Faculty for workshops on ‘Clinical Research Methodology’, ‘Good Clinical Practices’, Ethics in Biomedical Research’

DR.NITYA WADHWA

MD (Pediatrics)

SENIOR PROFESSOR

Publication