Speakers

His research program focuses on phylodynamic analysis of pathogen sequence data with the goal of making inferences that are actionable to public health. Dr. Bedford's open-source Nextstrain project has helped popularize and refine genomic epidemiology during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the Seattle Flu Study, Dr. Bedford lead the design and implementation of a next-generation infectious disease surveillance system that greatly impacted state and local response to the pandemic.

Julia’s research interests have been mainly in influenza dynamics across scales, from theoretical frameworks for interacting strain models to working on a large dataset of influenza-like illness in the US, particularly exploring the 2009 pandemic. Julia and team were the behind the UK’s largest citizen science experiment in collaboration with the BBC, using data contributed by users of a smartphone app to understand better how pandemic influenza might spread across the UK.

Prof. Gog has been very much involved in scientific advisory work to the UK government during the COVID-19 pandemic, both as a member of SPI-M (the specialist pandemic modelling group) and as a participant in SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies). In 2020, Julia was awarded the Royal Society’s Rosalind Franklin Award, and an OBE for services to academia and the COVID-19 response.

Her 20-year career has focused on infectious disease transmission, including the development of novel methods for surveillance and outbreak investigation, and development of interventions to prevent emerging infections. Gurley spent 12-years with the ICDDR,B in Dhaka, Bangladesh where she served as the Director of their Emerging Infections Programme. Her research uses a One Health approach, which takes into account the close relationships between human health and the health of other species and the environment. Gurley was awarded the 2020 Shikani/El-Hibri Prize for Innovation and Discovery at the Johns Hopkins University for her contributions to the COVID-19 pandemic response.

The focus of her research is on the dynamics and control of rabies, working in East Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe, to address fundamental and applied questions. In Tanzania, she leads a long-term programme tracking rabies transmission through contact tracing and whole genome sequencing, and conducting implementation research on large-scale dog vaccination and surveillance. She works closely with international organisations and governments, developing models and analyses to support policy and practice.

Dr Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has over 20 years’ experience working in senior public health and leadership positions in several National Public Health Institutes, including the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the UK's Health Protection Agency, and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Dr Ihekweazu has led several short- term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world including the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)’

He was the last Head of Community Medicine (2012-3) at the University as well as Hong Kong's first Under Secretary for Food and Health (2008-11) and fifth Director of the Chief Executive's Office (2011-2) in government.  Leung is one of Asia’s leading epidemiologists and global health exponents, having authored more than 500 scholarly papers with an h-index of 69 (Scopus). His research defined the epidemiology of three novel viral epidemics, namely SARS in 2003, influenza A(H7N9) in 2013 and most recently COVID-19.  He also led Hong Kong government’s efforts against pandemic A(H1N1) in 2009.  He has been an official adviser to the Hong Kong SAR and Chinese Central People's Governments, as well as to numerous overseas jurisdictions and international agencies including the World Health Organisation.  He edited the Journal of Public Health (2007-14), was inaugural co-editor of Epidemics, associate editor of Health Policy and is founding deputy editor-in-chief of China CDC Weekly.  He currently serves on the editorial boards of seven journals, including the British Medical Journal.

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Dr Van Kerkhove specializes in outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging pathogens. She completed her undergraduate degree at Cornell University, a MS Degree in epidemiology at Stanford University, and a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Apart from being the Technical Lead for COVID-19, Dr Van Kerkhove is also the Head of the Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit and the MERS-CoV Technical Lead in the World Health Organization’s Health Emergency Program.

Dr Van Kerkhove’s main research interests include zoonotic, respiratory and emerging/re-emerging viruses such as avian influenza, MERS-CoV, Ebola, Marburg, plague and Zika. Her work focuses on investigating factors associated pathogen emergence, transmission between animals and humans, the epidemiology of high threat pathogens with epidemic and pandemic potential, and ensuring research directly informs public health policies for action.