Abdullah Baqui is a professor of International Health and Director of the International Center for Maternal and Newborn Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is trained in medicine, public health, heath systems, infectious diseases, and epidemiology and has extensive experience in public health research, training, education, and policy advocacy.

In 2000 he joined the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to joining the school, he served as director of Child Health Program of icddr,b in Bangladesh and worked with Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Bangladeshi NGOs to establish the Projahnmo Research Group in Bangladesh. He conducted pioneering research related to newborn and child health, infectious diseases, micronutrients, and other nutritional problems that influenced national and global policies and programs.

He has more than 30 years of experience in designing community based interventions, conducting clinical and community trials, large scale program evaluations and setting up surveillance and surveys. Current research interests include design and evaluation of health interventions to improve health and survival of mothers and children, particularly newborn babies and evaluation of preventive and curative health service programs in low- and middle-income countries of South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa.