Mahesh Karra is an Associate Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Director of the Program on Women’s Empowerment Research (POWER). Maheesh was also an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Göttingen’s Center for Modern Indian Studies from 2024-2025. His academic and research interests are broadly in development economics, health economics, quantitative methods, and applied demography.
Mahesh has conducted field work in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. He has also worked for the Population Reference Bureau and the Futures Group International and served as a consultant to the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Population Council. He is Co-editor of Studies in Family Planning, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles on public health, social science, and biomedical research on sexual and reproductive health, fertility, and family planning.
