Rina Das, Ph.D.

Director
Division of Integrative Biological and Behavioral Sciences
dasr2@mail.nih.gov
301-496-3996

Dr. Rina Das serves as Director of the Division of Integrative Biological and Behavioral Sciences at NIMHD. She focuses on promoting research to understand and address the various factors that play a role in health disparities among different populations. She lends her expertise to a wide array of NIMHD programs that seek to improve minority health and health disparities, including translational sciences, cancer health disparities, research on the intersection of biological and social sciences, social epigenomics, community-based interventions, and immigrant health.

Before coming to NIMHD in 2014, Dr. Das served as a program director at the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. She managed programs on cancer health disparities research that focused on community-based interventions among various racial/ethnic minority populations, the role biological factors play in cancer disparities, and grants that enable training to improve diversity in the research workforce. Dr. Das also served as a Scientific Review Officer (SRO) at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH.

Dr. Das earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India in 1987, where she studied molecular biology and signaling pathways. Her postdoctoral training in cancer research took place at the National Cancer Institute from 1988 to 1996, where she focused on the relationship between genes, hormones, and breast cancer.

Selected Publications

• Stern, M. C., Fejerman, L., Das, R., Setiawan, V. W., Cruz-Correa, M. R., Pérez-Stable, E. J., & Figueiredo, J. C. (2016). Variability in cancer risk and outcomes within US Latinos by national origin and genetic ancestry. Current Epidemiology Reports, 3, 181-190.
• Das, R. (2015). Overview on obesity and cancer in diverse populations. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 24(10), IA43. doi: 10.1158/1538-7755.DISP14-IA43.
• Mohammed, S. I., Springfield, S., & Das, R. (2012). Role of epigenetics in cancer health disparities. In R. G. Dumitrescu & M. Verma (Eds.), Cancer Epigenetics: Methods and Protocols, 863 (395-410). Humana Press.
• Das, R., Hammamieh, R., Neill, R., Jett, M. (2001). Expression pattern of fatty acid binding proteins in human normal and cancer prostate cells and tissues. Clinical Cancer Res. 7:1706-1715.

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Page updated July 7, 2023