astronomy

Habibul Ahsan

Habibul Ahsan is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Habibul Ahsan rather than just read about it. In short: Habibul Ahsan is a Bangladeshi epidemiologist. He is the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Dean for Population and Precision Health and directs the Institute for Population and Precision Health.

Key takeaways

Habibul Ahsan belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Habibul Ahsan to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Habibul Ahsan from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Habibul Ahsan is a Bangladeshi epidemiologist. He is the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Dean for Population and Precision Health and directs the Institute for Population and Precision Health. His research focuses on the health effects of arsenic exposure from drinking water — particularly through the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study, a large cohort study in Bangladesh — and on the genetic epidemiology of cancer and other diseases.

Biography Habibul Ahsan was born in Bangladesh. After earning his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Dhaka in 1989, Ahsan completed a master's in medical science at the University of Western Australia in 1992. He conducted postdoctoral research in molecular epidemiology at Columbia University from 1993 to 1995. He was an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health before moving to the University of Chicago in 2006. In 2018, the University of Chicago appointed Ahsan to the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professorship within the Department of Public Health Sciences. He serves as the Dean for Population and Precision Health and director of the university's Institute for Population and Precision Health.

Research Naturally occurring arsenic in the groundwater of Bangladesh, affecting an estimated 35 to 77 million people, has been described in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization as the largest mass poisoning of a population in history. Ahsan was a principal investigator of the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS), a prospective cohort study in Araihazar, Bangladesh. A 2004 study of children in Araihazar, co-authored by Ahsan, reported that higher arsenic concentrations in drinking water were associated with reduced intellectual function. A 2010 analysis from the cohort, published in The Lancet with Ahsan as senior author, found that chronic arsenic exposure through drinking water was associated with increased all-cause and chronic-disease mortality. The study, which linked roughly one in five deaths in the exposed population to arsenic, received international news coverage. A 2013 study using the HEALS cohort, with Ahsan as senior author, found that higher consumption of rice was associated with greater arsenic exposure and a higher prevalence of arsenical skin lesions, suggesting that rice can be a source of arsenic beyond drinking water. Ahsan has also worked on the genetic epidemiology of cancer and other complex diseases. He was the first author of a 2014 genome-wide association study of early-onset breast cancer that identified PFKM as a novel breast cancer gene. As a participant in large international research consortia, he was among the authors of a 2017 study in Nature that analysed more than 120,000 breast cancer cases and identified 65 new risk loci, a 2018 meta-analysis in Nature Communications identifying risk variants for type 2 diabetes, and the eQTLGen Consortium's 2021 analysis in Nature Genetics of genetic effects on blood gene expression. In addition to his work in Bangladesh, Ahsan leads the ChicagO Multiethnic Prevention and Surveillance Study (COMPASS), a University of Chicago cohort begun in 2013 that examines how lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors contribute to disparities in cancer and chronic disease.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Habibul Ahsan

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Habibul Ahsan claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Habibul Ahsan before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Habibul Ahsan ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Habibul Ahsan

In research: Habibul Ahsan appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Habibul Ahsan in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Habibul Ahsan is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century Bangladeshi medical doctors, Bangladeshi epidemiologists, Bangladeshi expatriates in Australia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Habibul Ahsan outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Habibul Ahsan in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Habibul Ahsan means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Habibul Ahsan out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Habibul Ahsan in simple terms?

Why does Habibul Ahsan matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Habibul Ahsan?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Habibul Ahsan.