Professor Mohapatra is an expert in the areas of biotechnology and the law, public health law, reproductive justice, law and gender, and racial and health equity. Mohapatra earned her Juris Doctorate at Northwestern University School of Law, her Master of Public Health in chronic disease epidemiology at Yale University, and her bachelor’s degree with a major in Natural Sciences and a minor in Women’s Studies from Johns Hopkins University. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has written about various issues including structural racism, mask mandates and racial discrimination, mask mandates and disability law, vaccine passports, advance directives, health justice, and online teaching. Mohapatra is also regularly consulted by the media for her expertise, and she serves on the national Ethics Advisory Committee at the UNMC Global Center for Health Security. Her scholarship was featured recently in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News,  Vox and the Indy Star. Mohapatra earned the Dean’s Fellow title and award at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 for outstanding scholarship while she was a tenured professor there. Mohapatra is currently serving as the Murray Visiting Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas.