Arti Patel Varanasi

Dr. Arti Patel Varanasi is President and CEO of Advancing Synergy, LLC, where she is committed to developing innovations that empower individuals to lead healthier and longer lives. She has over 25 years of combined experience in cancer research, advocacy, capacity building, public health, and project management and maintains close ties to the medical, public health, and research community. Advancing Synergy served as the technology partner on a grant awarded to Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland by Susan G. Komen for the Cure® to provide virtual, personalized support to women undergoing breast cancer treatment through an innovative technology. Dr. Varanasi is passionate about developing innovations that build stronger communities and enable all individuals to lead healthier and longer lives. She is interested in leveraging technology to address chronic disease and increase health equity. Dr. Varanasi is an active member of the health, entrepreneurial, and technology communities in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area.

Formerly, Dr. Varanasi was a Senior Study Director at Westat and managed a variety of research and informatics projects. At Westat, she managed and coordinated daily activities of various research studies that collected, processed, and analyzed biospecimens. Her work focused on applying her scientific and informatics expertise to the design, implementation, and analysis of several nationally recognized epidemiological studies. Prior to Westat, she served as the Director of Global Health Development at CTIS, Inc. in Rockville, Maryland, where her work focused on leveraging information technology solutions to build global health capacity. Dr. Varanasi was a fellow in the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program in the Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute from 2001-2005, where her research interests focused on nutrition, immunity, and cancer prevention.

Dr. Varanasi holds a Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Master’s in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and recently received her certification in public health (CPH). Her doctoral research focused on understanding the genetic and epigenetic alterations that contribute to the development of mouse lung tumors. Dr. Varanasi currently teaches Molecular Biology, Epidemiology, and Psychosocial-Determinants of Health at AAP.