Shaffi Fazaludeen Koya obtained his DrPH from Boston University in 2022. He started his public health career with the World Health Organization India country office as a surveillance medical officer for the Polio Eradication program in 2008 after obtaining his medical degree and MPH. Then he served as Médecins sans frontières India Mission Deputy Medical Coordinator before he became the Indian lead for the African Development Bank-funded project which supported public and private partnerships in Africa's health sector—a major program he undertook as the director of the Health Systems Research India Initiative, an organization he co-founded. In between, he was a consultant to the WHO India office on TB elimination, where he supported India’s national TB elimination program. During 2013 - 2016, he was the deputy director and MPH course coordinator at the Global Institute of Public Health, India, where he continues as an adjunct faculty. From 2016 to 2019, he worked with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health as a public health consultant and lecturer of preventive medicine.

His research is focused on three areas: first —antimicrobial resistance, inclusive of the appropriate use of antibiotics and its determinants and related policy and program interventions; second— global health security and infectious diseases, with a particular focus on country and health system response, and third-social determinants of health and health equity, with specific attention paid to the availability and use of Social Determinants of Health data in decision-making.