ARCED International
Body of work
Recognised
- 2018Youth Innovation LabOne of 20 NCD talents selected worldwide, aligned with the WHO Global Dialogue programme.
- 2017UNLEASH Innovation Lab, DenmarkOne of 1,000 SDG Talents selected from more than 100 countries.
About
Mehrab Ali (published as ARM Mehrab Ali) is a Bangladeshi data scientist and development researcher. He founded ARCED Foundation in Dhaka in 2013, then Solutions of Things Lab, an innovation lab for research technology, and ARCED International, which he leads as CEO.
He has led randomised controlled trials, impact evaluations and large-scale surveys for the World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO, ODI, BRAC and the Government of Bangladesh. He started at BRAC’s Research and Evaluation Division and later worked at Innovations for Poverty Action.
Alongside the research he leads the ARCED Foundation team that builds the tools it runs on, from Stata modules and SurveyCTO plug-ins to software products used by research and IT teams. He also writes on air quality and consumer issues for The Business Standard and The Daily Star.
- Roles
- Founder & CEO, ARCED International
- Founder & Executive Director, ARCED Foundation
- Founder, Solutions of Things Lab (SoTLab)
- Fields
- Development economics, public health, impact evaluation, survey methodology, data science
- Education
- MSc, International Economics, North South University (2011)
- Based in
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- ORCID
- 0000-0001-5442-7147
Career
Early career
Researcher
BRAC Research and Evaluation Division
2013 - now
Founder & Executive Director
ARCED Foundation
2019 - 2021
Regional Technical Manager
Innovations for Poverty Action
2021 - 2022
Global Technical Solutions Lead
Innovations for Poverty Action
2025 - now
Founder & CEO
ARCED International
Built
Products and open-source tools built by Mehrab and the ARCED Foundation team he leads, each one started as a problem in the field.
Open-source tools
- odksplit
Labels and splits ODK / SurveyCTO multiple-response variables (SSC).
- catigen
Generates a SurveyCTO CATI form from a CAPI form.
- odkmerge
Merges parent variables into ODK repeat-group files.
- arceddataflow
A Stata-based system for survey data flow.
- meaning
Looks up the meaning of a word or phrase from Stata (SSC).
- SurveyCTO plug-ins
Coin flip, conjoint table, slot lottery and dynamic placeholders.
Elsewhere
Profile updated .
Next step