About the centre
CHIRAL Bangladesh — the Centre for Health Innovation, Research, Action and Learning — is an independent, volunteer-run research centre in Dhaka. We do computational health research, and we train undergraduate students to do it with us.
Why the centre exists
In most countries a science student meets real research in their final year, if at all. In Bangladesh the gap is wider: the appetite is substantial, the supervision capacity is not. Talented students reach graduation having never designed a study, cleaned a dataset, or read a reviewer's report on their own work.
CHIRAL was founded in 2020 to close that gap directly — not with lectures about research, but by putting first- and second-year students on real projects with real supervision, and keeping them there until something is published.
What we work on
Four groups, arranged along a single axis of scale: molecular data, patient records, predictive models, and geographic space. A tumour study may start in Computational Biology and end in Bio-AI; a dengue study may span Public Health & Informatics and Geospatial Health. The groups organise supervision, not territory.
How we are run
Entirely by volunteers. Nobody is paid, and nobody pays to take part. Mentors are graduate students, postdocs, academics and industry data scientists who give a few hours a week. That model constrains how fast we can grow, and we accept the constraint deliberately: it keeps participation open to students who could not afford a fee-based programme.
What we commit to
- Students first-author their work. Supervision is not co-option.
- Analyses are reproducible. Code and pipelines are version-controlled and, wherever the data licence permits, public.
- Teaching material is open. Our bootcamp content stays free so the capacity remains in the region.
- Limitations are stated. In a data-scarce setting, honest uncertainty is more useful than a confident number.
Governance & affiliation
CHIRAL is the research arm of the DeepBio ecosystem, alongside DeepBio Limited and DeepBio Academy. It is led by a Director, organised into units under Group Leaders, and run against written policies covering recruitment, authorship, data governance and conduct — all of them public. See governance & accountability.
To be completed — legal registration status and advisory board.
Funding
To be completed — current and past funding sources, or an explicit statement that the centre operates unfunded.
- Founded
- 2020
- Based in
- Azimpur, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh
- Model
- Volunteer-run and non-profit. No fees charged, no stipends paid.
- Groups
- Computational Biology · Public Health & Informatics · Bio-AI · Geospatial Health
- Working languages
- English and Bangla
- Contact
- chiralbd@gmail.com
Where this began
CHIRAL exists because two teachers at the Department of Microbiology, Jagannath University, took undergraduate curiosity seriously before there was anything here to point to. Their encouragement in those first years — the questions asked, the time given, the belief that students could do real research — is the reason the centre was attempted at all. We record our deep gratitude to them.
Dr. Syeda Tasneen Towhid
Associate Professor · Department of Microbiology
Jagannath University
Sabia Sultana
Assistant Professor · Department of Microbiology
Jagannath University
Three ways in
As a student
Undergraduates in any relevant discipline, from first year onward. No prior coding required.
Apply →As a mentor
Graduate students, postdocs, academics and industry researchers, supervising a small team.
Volunteer →As an institution
Universities, hospitals and non-profits bringing a question, a dataset, or a joint proposal.
Collaborate →