Purabi Dutta is a senior executive at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the world famous drug company in New York. As its Quality Assurance Specialist, she is perhaps the only Bangladeshi-American to have achieved that position. A closer look at her academic and professional accomplishments makes it amply clear why she has been vested with such critical responsibility.
In the 35 years since she arrived in the United States in 1970, after earning a bachelors degree in Pharmacy from Dhaka University, Mrs. Dutta has worked her way up through persistence and hard work. All through a brilliant student, she received a master's degree in bio-chemistry from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1972 and did her Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1976. She also earned a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology from the University of South Alabama.
Her academic excellence led to several prestigious teaching and research positions. She has taught at a number of universities and research institutes across the United States including the Cornell University Medical College and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the world famous cancer institute in New York.
Her work on nutrition and pharmacology has also landed her an impressive array of awards and scholarships from around the world including the National Institute of Health and the American Institute of Nutrition. In recognition of her professional achievements, she has been made a member of numerous professional bodies including the American Federation for Clinical Research and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Despite her stunning success in America, she has always nurtured a deep love and passion for Bangladesh, which drove her back to the country of her birth again and again. Between 1987 and 2000, she had gone back four times with a burning desire to do something worthwhile for the country. But family commitments and other circumstances made her return, albeit reluctantly, to her adopted land. In the intervening period, she worked for the Gono Shasthya Kendra, Beximco Pharmaceuticals and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). Of all the jobs she has had in America and Bangladesh "the Brac job was most satisfying and I immensely enjoyed doing that", Dr. Dutta said with a tinge of delight in her voice.
As director of the Health, Nutrition and Population Division at Brac, she widely traveled across Bangladesh, criss-crossing the towns and villages. That opportunity enabled her to rediscover the country she had left behind a year before the liberation war.
"I'm confidant we'll go back again and indulge in the kind of work I love to do", she said. Indeed, the family still maintains an apartment in Dhaka. Her husband, Jyoti Dutta, a former journalism professor at the University of Louisiana, travels back and forth to look after the house.
