Dr. Kalakoti is an MPH candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He earned his medical degree from Rural Medical College, India, and began his clinical career as a junior resident in Orthopedics and Trauma before completing postdoctoral fellowships in Neurosurgery at the Louisiana State University and in Orthopedic Spine at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Dr. Kalakoti served as faculty in the Department of Surgery at Yale University School of Medicine and held an academic appointment in Interventional Neurology at the University of Iowa Healthcare. He played a pivotal role in launching the DIRECT clinical trial———a pragmatic, multi-center, open-label, cluster-randomized crossover study with cumulative funding totalling $10.84 million. During its inaugural year, Dr. Kalakoti was instrumental in formulating the study protocol and the Manual of Procedures (MOP), which are now being implemented across 20 participating clinical sites nationwide, as well as the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) Charter.
Dr. Kalakoti’s research focuses on surgical outcomes and health services, with interests spanning orthopedic spine and neurosurgery, traumatic brain injury, traumatic spine injury, cerebrovascular disorders, neuro-signal processing, and clinical trials methodology at the intersection of healthcare, public health, and digital technology. He currently serves on the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee of the North American Spine Society (NASS), having held consecutive appointment terms, and co-authored two recently published Evidence-Based Clinical Guidelines on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Adults with Osteoporotic Vertebral Compression Fractures and Neoplastic Vertebral Fractures. Dr. Kalakoti has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles, five book chapters, and 95+ conference presentations, and actively reviews for more than a dozen clinical journals.