Sema Sgaier

Sema K. Sgaier (born 1975) is an Arab American scientist, global health expert, and documentary photographer. She is the co-founder and CEO of Surgo Health, a health technology company developing a social-behavioral analytics platform to improve healthcare outcomes. Sgaier's expertise includes molecular biology, genetics, genomics, neuroscience, epidemiology, disease surveillance, monitoring & evaluation of programs and policy development.

Sgaier was an assistant adjunct professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and an affiliate assistant professor of global health at the University of Washington. While she was working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation she and Mala Gaonkar co-founded the Surgo Foundation to better understand how data and behavior can influence public health outcomes. In 2020, she and Gaonkar co-founded Surgo Ventures, leveraging artificial intelligence and behavioral science to solve global health problems.

She was selected as a Rising Talent by the Women's Forum for the Economy & Society. She is a Board Member of the United States of Care and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Alumni Advisory Board. She is also a frequent OpEd contributor to media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report.

Early life Sgaier was born in 1975 in Tripoli, Libya to a Libyan father and Turkish mother. Sgaier studied molecular biology and genetics at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, where she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in 2005, ranking first of her class. Sgaier later obtained her Masters in Art in neuroscience from Brown University in 1999 and Masters in Science and Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in cellular and molecular biology (Developmental Genetics) in 2005 from New York University. She conducted her postdoctoral training in human genomics in the lab of Dr. Christopher A. Walsh at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School.

Sgaier is the recipient of New York University, Brown University fellowships and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center fellowships.

Sgaier studied Documentary Photography at the International Center of Photography.

Career Sgaier was the first to fine tune and apply the technique of Genetic Inducible Fate Mapping (GIFM) to understand how the complex 3D cerebellum develops from early-undifferentiated neuronal cells of the anterior hindbrain. With Tim Yu and colleagues, she discovered that mutations in the gene WDR62 causes microcephaly.

At the Center for Global Health Research, Sgaier designed and developed the Sample Registration Health Check-Up Survey to study the underlying risk factors of various diseases in India. She has published on the epidemiology of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.

From 2008, Sema was a Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She led a portfolio on voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention across eastern and southern Africa. As part of BMGF's India Country Office, Sema led the scale-up of the foundation's HIV prevention program (Avahan) in several states, managed its transition to the government of India, and developed data platforms for decision-making. She worked closely with the Indian National AIDS Control Program to assist in the design of their program and strengthen their analytic efforts.

She, Mala Gaonkar, and Malcolm Gladwell, co-founded the Surgo Foundation. They invested in public health projects, by listening to local needs. She founded Surgo Health.

Selected publications

Articles (selected)

Sgaier, Sema; Engl, Elisabeth; and Kretschmer, Steve. "Time to Scale Psycho-Behavioral Segmentation in Global Development". Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2018.

Book chapters "India: Scaling HIV Prevention through Partnerships – The Avahan Experience in India". with Aparajita Ramakrishnan and Ashok Alexander. in Innovative Health Partnerships: The Diplomacy of Diversity (Global Health Diplomacy: Volume 1). Daniel Low-Beer, ed. World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011. "The Concept of Fate Through the Lens of Genetics" with F. Berenshteyn, A. L. Joyner, S. Miller, C. Song, and M. P. Villanueva in Responsive Architectures: Subtle Technologies. Philip Beesley, Sachiko Hirosue, Jim Ruxton, Camile Turner, and Marion Tränkle, ed. Cambridge: Riverside Architectural Press, 2006 pp. 26–29.