CDC Country Director for Georgia and Regional Workforce Development Advisor Tushar Singh, MD, MS, PhD
Dr. Tushar Singh serves as the CDC Country Director for Georgia and the Regional Workforce Development Advisor for the CDC Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) regional office, based in Tbilisi, Georgia. In his country director role, Dr. Singh supports planning and implementation of CDC’s Global Health Security and other programs in Georgia. In his role as the Regional Advisor, he supports development, establishment, and sustainability of Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), public health emergency management, and other workforce development initiatives. Before moving to Georgia in August 2021, Dr. Singh served as the Country Director for CDC in Sierra Leone. He led strategic planning, policy development, and management for CDC programs, including the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), and COVID-19 response. He also supported development of global health security strategies at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
Dr. Singh served as CDC’s Resident Advisor for FETP in Sierra Leone in 2016-18. He led the establishment of FETP-Frontline and FETP-Intermediate in the country and supported development of strategic and operational plans for establishment of the National Public Health Agency in Sierra Leone. During CDC’s Ebola response in 2014-2016, Dr. Singh was deployed to West Africa multiple times, where he served in various positions, helped establish district Ebola response centers, and led coordination and response activities.
Prior to that, Dr. Singh worked as a medical epidemiologist in CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health (OSH), where his area of focus was electronic cigarettes. He led multiple research studies, including a Vital Signs report that helped frame U.S. policy on e-cigarette use among youth. He completed his Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) fellowship at CDC, where he led and supported several outbreak investigations domestically and internationally. He received the prestigious Alexander D. Langmuir Memorial Prize during EIS.
Before working at CDC, Dr. Singh was a research associate and program manager at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. He managed, implemented, and led multiple, multisite cohort studies and clinical trials. Prior to that, he worked as a physician in hospitals in India, where he led diverse patient care and public health activities.
Dr. Singh holds a PhD in global health epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh. He has an MS in tropical medicine and international health from Charité Medical University in Germany, University of Bergen in Norway, and Université Bordeaux Segalen in France, where he focused on HIV vaccine initiatives. He has an MD in medicine with honors from IM Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University in Moscow, Russia. He currently lives in Tbilisi, Georgia with his wife and two sons.