Dr. Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH - Using Science To Do Good For Humans, Animals And The Planet

Dr. Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH ( https://ayshaakhtar.com/ ) is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences ( https://contemporarysciences.org/ ), which is catalyzing the replacement of unreliable animal testing with more effective human-specific research techniques. As a double Board-certified neurologist and preventive medicine/public health specialist, she is on a mission to educate the world and demonstrate how there is a mutual benefit to both humans and animals when animals are protected.

A U.S veteran, Dr. Akhtar previously served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Army Traumatic Brain Injury Program developing the Army’s brain injury prevention and treatment strategies for soldiers, and as a Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Dr. Akhtar frequently deployed to assist with national public health emergencies.

For a decade, Dr. Akhtar was a Medical Officer at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), most recently in the Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats, implementing studies on vaccine effectiveness and safety and using her Top Secret Security clearance to develop national preparedness strategies for public health threats. She is published in peer-reviewed journals including Lancet, Pediatrics, Journal of Public Health Policy and Reviews in the Neurosciences.

Dr. Akhtar is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the author of the two books, Our Symphony With Animals. On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies and Animals and Public Health, which argues for the need for health institutions to include animals as part of the “public” in public health.

Dr. Akhtar is a graduate of the Eastern Virginia Medical School. She subsequently completed her general medicine internship at Washington Hospital Center and her neurology and preventive medicine residencies at the University of North Carolina Medical School in Chapel Hill. She received her Masters in Public Health at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, where she focused on bioethics.