Editorial Board

Editorial Board Members work closely with our in-house editors to ensure that all manuscripts are subject to the same editorial standards and journal policies. Our Editorial Board Members are active researchers recognized as experts in their field. They handle manuscripts within their broad areas of expertise, and oversee all aspects of the peer review process from submission to acceptance.

Editorial Board Members

 

Farzana Ali, MD, MPH, PhD, Stony Brook University, USA

orcid.org/0000-0001-7111-5268
Research areas: Medical imaging; Neurological disorders; Artificial intelligence; Biostatistics; Digital health; Bioinformatics; Biomarker development; Precision medicine

Farzana Ali Farzana Z. Ali, MD MPH PhD completed her medical degree from the University at Buffalo, NY, where she served as a teaching assistant and facilitator for various medical courses. She was awarded the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellowship during medical education and the James Platt White Society Award upon graduation for academic rigor and moral courage. She subsequently completed her PhD in biomedical engineering followed by postdoctoral training at Stony Brook University, NY, where her research was recognized with prestigious NIH awards. Dr. Ali’s research is primarily focused on the application of artificial intelligence for medical image analysis. She collaborates with experts in the field of neuroimaging for research and publications on the utility of advanced medical imaging and biomarker development. In addition, she works on the development of advanced statistical models for the identification of surrogate markers of treatment response using wearable sensor data from patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Personal webpage

Shiu Lun Ryan Au Yeung, MPH, PhD, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

orcid.org/0000-0001-6136-1836
Research areas: Alcohol; Cardiovascular diseases; Epidemiology; Mendelian randomization; Type 2 Diabetes

Shiu Lun Ryan Au Yeung headshotRyan Au Yeung (MPH (HKU), PhD (HKU)) is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. He is interested in the use of Mendelian randomization to identify causes and consequences of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, and to explore drug reposition opportunities. His earlier research focused on exploring the causal role of alcohol in cardiovascular diseases and mental health using ALDH2 polymorphism in a Southern Chinese Biobank (Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study). His recent work involves the use of UK Biobank and summary statistics from genome wide association studies to explore pleiotropic effects of commonly prescribed medications in cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (e.g. metformin). With the COVID-19 pandemic, he is also using Mendelian randomization to explore determinants (e.g. glycaemic traits) contributing to COVID-19 susceptibility. Ryan Au Yeung is currently one of the academic leads of the “Children of 1997” birth cohort in Hong Kong, where he is responsible for curating the genomic and metabolomic data
Personal webpage

Ahmad Abou Tayoun, PhD, DABMGG, Al Jalila Children’s Specialty Hospital, UAE

orcid.org/0000-0002-9134-1673
Research areas: Genomics; Genetics of disease; Rare disorders; Bioinformatics; Clinical Molecular Genetics

Ahmad Abou Tayoun is the Director of the Genomics Center of Excellence at Al Jalila Children’s, and an Associate Professor of Genetics at Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences. He completed his doctoral studies in genetics at Dartmouth College, followed by a fellowship in molecular diagnostics at Dartmouth Medical School. In 2013, he joined Harvard Medical School where he completed his clinical molecular genetics fellowship and, in 2015, became board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG). Dr. Abou Tayoun is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMGG). Prior to joining Al Jalila Children’s, he was a director in the Division of Genomic Diagnostics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and also an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Abou Tayoun’s main research interests are centered around characterizing the genomic landscape of pediatric diseases in the Middle East and cataloguing the normal genetic variation in this population. Dr. Abou Tayoun serves on several expert groups in his field. He is a co-chair of the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) Hearing Loss Expert Group, a member of the ClinGen Sequence Variant Interpretation (SVI) group and a member of the American College of Genetics and Genomics Interpreting Sequence Variants (ISV) workgroup. In those capacities, Dr. Abou Tayoun is working with international experts to establish guidelines and recommendations for sequence variant interpretation in genomic diagnostic settings.
Personal webpage

Shafqat Ahmad, PhD, Uppsala University, Sweden 

Research areas: Cardiometabolic disease epidemiology, causal inference, gene-environment interactions, population genetics, metabolomics, microbiota, genetic and nutritional epidemiology

Shafqat Ahmad is a Researcher at Uppsala University Sweden and his research focuses on understanding of cardiometabolic disease development. Shafqat's research combines methods from the molecular and genetic epidemiology field including biochemistry, genomics, metabolomics, microbiota with relation to lifestyle factors in large scale population-based studies to better understand the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Shafqat did his PhD at Lund University Sweden in 2015 where he studied the role of genetic and lifestyle factors in the pathogenesis of obesity. After PhD training, Shafqat joined Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, Harvard University USA where he studied the role of diet in relation to cardiometabolic disease. Since 2018, Shafqat is working at Uppsala University Sweden. In 2018, Shafqat was the recipient of the Rising Star Award from European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), finalist for the Young Investigator Award at American Heart Association, and was awarded the Best Young Research Award from the Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University Sweden.
Personal webpage.

Omar Yaxmehen Bello-Chavolla, MD, PhD, National Institute for Geriatrics, Mexico

orcid.org/0000-0003-3093-937X
Research areas: Diabetes, Cardio-metabolic medicine, Aging, Statistical Modelling

Associate Professor at the National Institute for Geriatrics in Mexico City and an Instructor in Physiology and Applied Biostatistics at the National Autonomous University Faculty of Medicine in Mexico. The focus of my research is on cardio-metabolic disease risk factor epidemiology in high burden settings and on the intersection of these risk factors with the aging process in metabolic and endocrine systems. My research program leverages domestic and international collaborations to identify how molecular, clinical, and sociodemographic mechanisms underlying metabolic aging accelerate the risk for cardiovascular disease among adults in Mexico and in Latin America, with a focus on diabetes, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance and obesity.
Lab webpage.

Fadil Bidmos, PhD, Imperial College London, UK

orcid.org/0000-0003-2843-409X
Research areas: Bacterial vaccine antigens, bacterial meningitis, human monoclonal antibodies, conjugate vaccines, IgG

Fadil Bidmos is a MRC Career Development Fellow at Imperial College London. He received training in molecular bacteriology and immunology at University of Leicester where his PhD explored the vaccine candidacy of 2 iron-acquisition proteins for a prospective meningococcal vaccine. Thus, his research expertise is in the area of vaccine antigen discovery and design for bacterial pathogens using advanced tools and strategies such as Reverse Vaccinology 2.0 and bacterial glycoengineering. His research also extends to investigations of the breadth of the adaptive immune response to: experimental human challenge; bacterial vaccines; disseminated infection (specifically in childhood diseases); and long-term asymptomatic colonisation of the nasopharynx by meningococci.
Personal webpage

Elaine Chow, MD, PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

orcid.org/0000-0002-4147-3387
Research areas: diabetes, continuous glucose monitoring, novel glucose lowering drugs

Elaine ChowElaine received her medical training in UK and completed her PhD on cardiovascular effects of hypoglycaemia at the University of Sheffield. She since joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong where she is also Deputy Medical Director at the Phase 1 Clinical Trial Centre. She secured a number of external grants researching continuous glucose monitoring, insulins and glucose lowering drugs in relation to prediabetes, type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. She has been principal investigator or co-investigator for over 70 Phase 1 to 4 studies relating to cardiometabolic drugs. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, including articles in Diabetes Care, Diabetes and Nature Reviews Endocrinology. She has also received several awards, including the Hong Kong College of Physicians Richard Yu Lecture and Women’s Interprofessional Network of the American Diabetes Association abstract award in 2022. In addition to teaching and research, she is associate editor and editorial board member for several journals.
Personal webpage

Francesco Ciompi, PhD, Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands

orcid.org/0000-0001-8327-9606
Research areas: computational pathology, artificial intelligence, precision oncology, medical image analysis

Ciompi, Francesco Francesco Ciompi is Associate Professor in Computational Pathology. He received a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2006 and a Master's degree in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2008. In 2012, he obtained the Ph.D. (cum laude) in Applied Mathematics and Analysis at the University of Barcelona, with a thesis on machine learning for medical image analysis. In 2013, he joined the Diagnostic Image Analysis Group at Radboud University Medical Center as a postdoctoral researcher, working on automated Chest CT image analysis for efficient lung cancer screening. In 2016, he joined the Computational Pathology group of Radboud University Medical Center, where he is currently leading a research group working on artificial intelligence for computational pathology applications in precision oncology and computer-aided diagnosis.
Personal webpage

Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, PhD, The University of Hong Kong, China

orcid.org/0000-0003-3293-6279
Research areas: Infectious diseases, molecular evolution, genomic epidemiology, phylogenetics, phylodynamics, disease emergence and transmission, RNA viruses, influenza, SARS-CoV-2

Vijaykrishna DhanasekaranVijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, PhD is Associate Professor, and head of pathogen evolution Lab at School of Public Health and HKU-Pasteur Research Pole at The University of Hong Kong. He has a BSc MSc and MPhil from University of Madras, India and a PhD (2002-2005) in microbial ecology and evolution from University of Hong Kong. Before joining HKU, he was faculty at Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore from 2010 and Monash University Australia from 2016-2020. His primary research focus is on infectious disease epidemiology and evolution. By conducting epidemiological studies across Asia-Pacific, and application of computational methods at the intersection of epidemiology, phylogenetics, and population genetics, his group aims to advance understanding of the genetic and ecological factors that determine the emergence and distribution of infectious diseases.
Personal webpage

Carlota Dobaño, PhD, Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain

orcid.org/0000-0002-6751-4060
Research areas: Malaria immunology and vaccines, neglected tropical diseases immunology, immune responses during pregnancy and infancy, COVID-19 immunology and vaccines, systems immunology and vaccinology, biomarkers of immunity and pathogenesis

Carlota DobanoCarlota Dobaño is the head of the Malaria Immunology Group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and coordinates large multicentre studies on naturally acquired and experimental immunity to malaria, SARS-CoV-2 and other infections. In 1992 she graduated in Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. In 1994 she completed an MSc in Applied Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, developing her thesis project at the Department of Parasitology, National Institute for Medical Research, Medical Research Council, London. In 1999 she obtained her PhD degree the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the study of naturally-acquired immune responses to Plasmodium falciparum, with research work on severe malaria conducted at the Malaria Project and Wellcome Trust Centre, Blantyre, Malawi. During 1999-2002 she was a postdoctoral fellow working on malaria vaccine preclinical development at the Malaria Program, Naval Medical Research Center, USA. In 2003 she joined ISGlobal and the Manhiça Health Research Centre, Mozambique, to become a laboratory group leader in immune epidemiology research of poverty diseases.
Personal webpage

Joyita Dutta, PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-6712-4927
Research areas: Neuroimaging, connectomics, Alzheimer’s disease, digital health, machine learning, artificial intelligence

Joyita DuttaDr. Joyita Dutta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California. She directs the Biomedical Imaging and Data Science Laboratory (BIDSLab) which develops signal processing and deep learning techniques for imaging, graph, and time-series datasets. Her research interests include Alzheimer’s neuroimaging, brain network analysis, and wearables data analytics for sleep and personal health monitoring. Her scientific contributions include the development of a broad range of tools for medical image reconstruction and enhancement with a focus on multimodality information integration. She was the recipient of the 2016 Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) and the 2016 Bruce Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award from the IEEE.
Personal webpage

Elise Erickson, PhD, CNM, University of Arizona, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-6655-3500
Research areas: Maternal morbidity, postpartum hemorrhage, epigenetic aging, pharmacogenetics, care during childbirth

Elise Erickson headshotElise Erickson, PhD, CNM is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona. She has been a practicing Certified Nurse Midwife since 2005 and since completing a PhD in 2018, studies pregnancy, childbirth and maternal health. Her work is largely focused on a variety of mechanisms underpinning maternal health from epigenetic/genetic variability to clinical practice variation and social determinants of health. Specific areas of interest include postpartum hemorrhage, epigenetic aging, oxytocin response/use, health disparities and the physiology of parturition.
Personal webpage

Andrey Fedorov, PhD, Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA

orcid.org/0000-0003-4806-9413
Research areas: Imaging Data Commons, Medical image computing, Imaging informatics, Open science

Andrey FedorovAndrey Fedorov is a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Associate Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Andrey is one of the leads of the team tasked with building National Cancer Institute Imaging Data Commons (IDC). A computer scientist by training, Andrey spent the past 15 years at the BWH Surgical Planning Lab working on translation and evaluation of image computing tools in clinical research applications. He is dedicated to developing infrastructure and best practices to help imaging researchers improve transparency of their studies, simplify data sharing and make their analyses more easily accessible and reproducible by others.
Personal webpage

Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia, PhD, Alberta Health Services, Canada

orcid.org/0000-0001-9594-9881
Research areas: Cancer epidemiology, descriptive epidemiology, childhood, adolescent, youth health

Miranda Fidler-BenaoudiaDr Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia is a Cancer Epidemiologist/Research Scientist in the Department of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research at Alberta Health Services, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary (Canada). Her research focuses primarily on describing the burden of childhood, adolescent and young adult cancers and evaluating their related late-effects. She is additionally interested in sub-populations, such as indigenous peoples, and continues to undertake research comprehensively describing cancer indicators nationally, regionally and at global levels.
Personal webpage

Catherine Freije, PhD, The Rockefeller University, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-1939-3102
Research areas: Virology, infectious disease, CRISPR-Cas systems, diagnostics, antiviral therapeutics, viral genomics

Catherine FreijeDr. Catherine Freije is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease led by Dr. Charles Rice. She received a bachelor of science from Brown University and completed her Ph.D. in Dr. Pardis Sabeti’s laboratory within Harvard University’s Program in Virology. She has leveraged her expertise in virology and genomics to develop CRISPR-based technologies for diagnosing and treating viral infections. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in healthcare for her viral diagnostics work. Dr. Freije is currently a Berger Foundation Fellow supported by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation and is studying the relationship between hepatitis B viral diversity and the host immune response.
Personal webpage

Olivier Gevaert, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-9965-5466
Research areas: Genomics, imaging, electronic health records, machine learning, data fusion, artificial intelligence

Olivier GevaertDr. Gevaert is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Biomedical informatics) & Biomedical Data Science at the Stanford University School of Medicine (USA). The Gevaert lab long-term focus is on multi-scale data fusion: the development of machine learning methods for biomedical decision support using multi-scale biomedical data. Previously Dr. Gevaert pioneered data fusion work using Bayesian and kernel methods studying transcriptomics of breast and ovarian cancer. His subsequent work concerned the development of methods for multi-omics data fusion. This resulted in the development of MethylMix, to identify differentially methylated genes, and AMARETTO, a computational method to integrate DNA methylation, copy number and gene expression data to identify cancer modules. In the past few years, the Gevaert lab has expanded their work by focusing on linking molecular data with cellular and tissue-level phenotypes. For example, the lab has had seminal contributions in radiomics, radiogenomics and imaging genomics as instantiations of our long-term research theme on data fusion and the Gevaert lab has a track record in this field. In summary, the Gevaert lab has an interdisciplinary focus on developing novel algorithms for multi-omics, multi-modal and multi-scale biomedical data fusion and in future work is focused to develop novel machine learning algorithms for integrating disparate data streams.
Personal webpage

Olivier Govaere, PhD, KU Leuven, Belgium

orcid.org/0000-0002-4426-6930
Research areas: Hepatology, pathology, NAFLD, hepatic cancer, biomarkers, multi-omics, spatial profiling 

Olivier is a Tenure Track Professor at the Translational Cell & Tissue Research lab, Department of Imaging and Pathology at the KU Leuven in Belgium. He obtained his PhD in Molecular and Stem Cell Medicine at the KU Leuven, investigating the role of hepatic progenitor cells in liver regeneration and carcinogenesis. His postdoctoral work at Newcastle University in the UK, aimed to understand the pathophysiology of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and to examine the determinants of individual risk for disease progression by using a "multi-omics" translational-science approach. His current work focusses on immunometabolism in metabolic associated fatty liver disease and spatial profiling.
Personal webpage

Jessica Harding, PhD, Emory University, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-6664-8630
Research areas: epidemiology, health services research, social determinants of health, diabetes, kidney disease, kidney transplantation

Jessica HardingDr Jessica Harding is an epidemiologist and health services researcher at Emory University’s School of Medicine in Atlanta, USA, and the Associate Director of Emory’s Health Services Research Center. She received her PhD in medical research (epidemiology) from Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia, in 2016, and engaged in a research fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2017-2019. Her research focus is on healthcare quality, outcomes research, clinical/translational research, health disparities, and evidence-based medicine as it relates to diabetes, kidney disease, and transplantation. She has particular interests in (1) gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to treatments for advanced kidney disease, (2) the changing profile of diabetes complications in an aging population with complex care needs, and (3) leveraging existing data systems to bridge gaps in knowledge. These pursuits converge into a singular mission to advance healthcare equity, redefine the care of aging populations with chronic disease, and propel medical insights through innovative data utilization. Dr. Harding serves on several expert groups in his field, including the biannual International Diabetes Federation Atlas, National Institute of Health study section, and the National Kidney Foundation, and is part of the editorial team for Diabetes Care and Diabetes and Metabolism. In 2022, Dr Harding was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group.
Personal webpage

Elif Inan-Eroglu, PhD, German Institute of Human Nutrition, Germany

orcid.org/0000-0001-9788-7266
Research areas: nutritional epidemiology, diet quality, adiposity, alcohol consumption, diabetes

Elif Inan-ErogluDr Elif Inan-Eroglu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Epidemiology Department of the German Institute of Human Nutrition. Elif received her PhD in nutrition and dietetics from Hacettepe University in Turkey and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia where she developed an interest in nutritional epidemiology and public health. She was the recepient of the Early Career Network Public Health Researcher award by the European Association for the Study of Obesity in 2022. Elif’s work covers a broad portfolio of nutrition research with the aim of better understanding how nutrition could affect long-term health outcomes. Her expertise includes nutritional epidemiology, obesity, clinical trials and alcohol consumption.
Personal webpage

Christiana Kartsonaki, DPhil, University of Oxford, UK 

orcid.org/0000-0002-3981-3418

Research areas: Statistics, Cohort studies, Cancer epidemiology, Biomarkers, Proteomics, Metabolomics, Oncogenic infections, COVID-19

Christiana KartsonakiChristiana Kartsonaki is a Senior Statistician at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford (UK). She is working on the epidemiology of cancer and other diseases, as well as on related statistical methods. Her interests include risk factors (including metabolic and lifestyle risk factors and infectious pathogens) and biomarkers for cancer, COVID-19, and statistical methods motivated by biomedical applications. She has a degree in Mathematics, an MSc in Applied Statistics and a DPhil in Statistics. She has previously worked in the Department of Oncology of the University of Oxford and at the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge.
Personal webpage

Shunsuke Koga, MD, PhD, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, USA

orcid.org/0000-0001-8868-9700
Research areas: Neurodegenerative disease, Movement disorders, Neuropathology

Dr. Shunsuke Koga is currently a Pathology Resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Anatomic Pathology and Neuropathology. Prior to this, he served as an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Mayo Clinic. Driven by his desire to delve deeper into his field and learn systematically, Dr. Koga transitioned from his role at the Mayo Clinic to engage in intensive residency training. His decision underlines his commitment to constant growth and knowledge enhancement in the intricate fields of Neuropathology. Dr. Koga obtained an M.D. and Ph.D. from Chiba University and received clinical training in Neurology at Chiba University Hospital and postdoctoral training in Neuropathology at the Mayo Clinic. His research focuses on understanding the clinicopathological correlations and comorbid pathologies of synucleinopathies and tauopathies, with a particular emphasis on multiple system atrophy (MSA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Dr. Koga's research is multi-faceted and includes the application of machine learning techniques in Neuropathology. Through the use of whole slide images from a collection of Mayo Clinic brain bank specimens, he aims to develop machine learning-based diagnostic models that can assist in decision-making in neuropathological diagnosis.
Personal webpage

Kin On KWOK, PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

orcid.org/0000-0002-2804-5433                                                                                                                                Research areas: Infectious disease epidemiology and mathematical modelling

Kin On KWOK

KWOK Kin On is an Associate Professor in the JC School of Public Health and Primary Care at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is devoted to better infection control in vulnerable healthcare settings, such as residential care homes for the elderly, and to provide timely public responses to emerging and continuing infectious diseases. His research interests are antimicrobial resistance (AMR), SARS-CoV-2, influenza and Monkeypox. His early work examined the pathway of nosocomial transmission of SARS through mathematical modelling, and the serology response of influenza. Recently, his group has expanded to study the epidemiology of AMR pathogens.
Personal webpage

Francisco Lai, PhD, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

orcid.org/0000-0002-9121-1959
Research areas: Pharmacoepidemiology, Multimorbidity, Psychotropic Drug Long-term Safety

Francisco LaiDr. Francisco Lai is an Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong, jointly appointed by the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy and the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care. He graduated from HKUST Business School in 2013 and completed his Ph.D. in public health from CUHK Medicine in 2019, with his research recognized with the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship. As a big-data epidemiologist, Dr. Lai focuses on double burdens of infectious and non-communicable diseases as well as physical and mental disorders, i.e., multimorbidity. He has published over 100 scholarly journal articles, including reputable journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine and Nature Communications. Dr. Lai's research has been recognized with an H-Index of 24 (as of Sep 2023), and he has been shortlisted multiple times for the HKU Research Output Prize since 2022. Dr. Lai is also an editorial board member for the Journal of Multimorbidity and Comorbidity and a Section Editor for Stress and Health, highlighting his dedication to advancing knowledge in his field. His research on vaccine safety and pharmacovigilance during the COVID-19 pandemic has been acknowledged with the HKU Knowledge Exchange Award in 2023.
Personal webpage

Jianmei Leavenworth, MD, PhD, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-4100-9883
Research areas: Cancer immunology, Neuroimmunology, immunotherapy, oncolytic virotherapy

Jianmei LeavenworthDr. Jianmei Leavenworth is currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She is also a Scientist of Heersink School of Medicine Immunology Institute, and an Associate Scientist of the Neuro-Oncology Program of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB. Previously, she was at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School serving as a postdoctoral fellow and then as an instructor. Her research group focuses on the translational immunology research spanning from neuroinflammation to neuro-oncology to cancer immunology and immunotherapies, and is participating in clinical trials using oncolytic herpes simplex virus to treat patients with malignant brain tumor.
Personal webpage

Raymond Mak, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA 

orcid.org/0000-0002-8754-0565
Research areas: Lung cancer, radiation therapy, radiomics, artificial intelligence in medicine, clinical oncology, radiation oncology, cancer therapy toxicity

Raymond MakRaymond Mak MD, is an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (USA). Dr. Mak’s research interests focus on developing imaging biomarkers to predict radiation therapy response in lung cancer patients and applying artificial intelligence techniques to automate radiation therapy planning. He has led crowd innovation and clinical trials to develop novel, clinically-relevant artificial intelligence techniques. Dr. Mak’s clinical focus includes treatment of thoracic malignancies and novel image-guided radiation therapy techniques.
Personal webpage

Peter M Macharia, PhD, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium

orcid.org/0000-0003-3410-1881
Research areas: Disease mapping, spatial access, spatial analysis, child mortality and determinants, malaria, maternal health, health geography

Dr Peter Macharia is a spatial epidemiologist- postdoc research fellow based at the Department of Public health in the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium. He is also a visiting researcher at KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya. He is interested in the application of geospatial models to derive spatial health metrics to aid in a better understanding of health inequalities, vulnerabilities, and population health. He holds a BSc in Geomatic Engineering & Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), a post graduate diploma in health research methods, MSc in GIS and remote sensing and a PhD in spatial epidemiology.
Personal webpage

Adam May, MD, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-4120-5075
Research areas: cardiology, critical care, electrocardiography, echocardiography, artificial intelligence, machine learning

Adam MayDr. Adam May is a cardiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. May possesses clinical expertise in cardiovascular diseases, critical care medicine, electrocardiography, and echocardiography, with his all training completed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. In his current role at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. May oversees the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO. Here, he plays a pivotal role in the management of critically ill patients grappling with a wide array of cardiac conditions. Dr. May's primary research endeavors are rooted in the continuous refinement and development of innovative processes aimed at enhancing the diagnostic capabilities of automated electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation. His groundbreaking work has led to significant contributions to the field, including the creation of the WCT Formula, VT Prediction Model, WCT Formula II, and the Mayo Clinic VT Calculator. These automated methods help achieve the precise and timely differentiation of wide complex tachycardias. Looking ahead, Dr. May's research will continue to involve the development and implementation of other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for the ECG. His forthcoming endeavors aim to further enhance the accurate discernment of patients' underlying heart rhythm and other electrocardiographic abnormalities, helping to usher new automated tools for diagnostic electrocardiography.
Personal webpage

Raphaelle Metras, DVM, PhD, Inserm, France

orcid.org/0000-0002-2646-196X
Research areas: Epidemiology of infectious diseases, zoonoses, vector-borne, one health, human spillover, mathematical modelling, spatial epidemiology and statistics

Raphaelle is a researcher in infectious diseases epidemiology at the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (IPLESP) at Inserm (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale). Trained as a vet, her main focus is to understand the determinants of zoonotic pathogens’ transmission at the interface between animals, humans and the environment, analysing empirical data with modelling. She has extensive experience in setting-up and conducting field work as part as epidemiological investigations in animals (domestic and wild) and vectors, in settings varying from tropical to temperate areas. Her modelling approaches range from spatial statistics to mathematical modelling, model fitting and inference.
Personal webpage.

David Miyamoto, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA

orcid.org/0000-0003-3692-8823
Research areas: Liquid biopsy, circulating tumor cells, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, radiation oncology

David MiyamotoDavid Miyamoto, MD, PhD is an Investigator in the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital, an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (USA). Dr. Miyamoto is also a board-certified radiation oncologist specializing in genitourinary malignancies who sees patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His research efforts focus on the development of novel biomarkers to guide bladder and prostate cancer therapy and improve the individualized care of each patient, with a particular emphasis on liquid biopsies and the molecular analysis of circulating tumor cells. His translational research laboratory has been supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the Radiation Oncology Institute.
Personal webpage

Betty Raman, DPhil, University of Oxford, UK

orcid.org/0000-0002-1239-9608
Research areas: Pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease with a focus on heart failure and inherited cardiomyopathies, non-invasive imaging of cardiovascular disease, with a special interest in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and of long term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infections in survivors

Betty RamanDr Betty Raman is an academic cardiologist with expertise in inherited heart conditions, heart failure, multiorgan magnetic resonance imaging and COVID-19. Dr Raman completed her PhD from the University of Oxford. She is a senior researcher at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, Oxford (UK) and a recipient of numerous young investigator awards, institutional excellence award and grants.
Personal webpage
 

Timothy Rawson, PhD, Imperial College London, UK

orcid.org/0000-0002-2630-9722
Research areas: Antimicrobial stewardship, antimicrobial resistance, artificial intelligence, biosensor technology, antimicrobial dose optimisation

Timothy RawsonTim is an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology and honorary clinical lecturer at Imperial College London. He completed his PhD in 2018 working between the departments of Medicine, Bio-engineering, and Chemistry. His research interests surround precision use of antimicrobial agents. His research focuses on biosensor technology, antimicrobial dose optimisation, and machine learning.
Personal webpage
 

Arjee Restar, MPH, PhD, University of Washington, USA

orcid.org/0000-0003-2992-8198
Research areas: community engagement; transgender health; LGBTQ health; epidemiology; health policy;

Arjee RestarDr. Restar (she/her) applies epidemiologic methods to behavioral, social, structural, and health services research and policy to address inequities in health outcomes and access, particularly as experienced by communities of transgender and nonbinary people in the US and globally. She is expanding transgender health as a field by building research environments that produce high-quality evidence and using integrated methods in health community strategies, implementation science, behavioral economics, community engagement, among others. Dr. Restar's work aims to visibilize and address the myriad of health priorities of transgender and nonbinary communities at-large, along with community stakeholders, scientists, scholars, and trainees who are also paving this field forward. This work includes advocating for institutional policies and practices that dismantle systems of oppression, inequality, and inequity.
Personal webpage

Ganna Rozhnova, PhD, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands

orcid.org/0000-0002-6725-7359
Research areas: mathematical modeling, infectious disease dynamics and control, public health measures, vaccination strategies, elimination; HIV, SARS-CoV-2, influenza, CMV, childhood infections

Ganna RozhnovaDr Ganna Rozhnova is an Associate Professor in Infectious Disease Modeling at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and an affiliated collaborator at the BioISI—Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute in Portugal. Her research centers on the application of infectious disease modeling to answer questions and support evidence-based policymaking in public health. She is interested in the emergence, evolution and spatio-temporal dynamics of infectious diseases on different scales (e.g., within-host or on population-level) as well as in the evaluation of the impact of interventions such as, e.g., vaccination or treatment, on transmission. Her most recent research addresses the prospects of HIV elimination, the impact of promising HIV cure strategies on HIV transmission, and (post-)pandemic dynamics of SARS-CoV-2. Other applications include influenza, CMV and childhood infections. Dr Rozhnova is a recipient of highly competitive awards (PhD and postdoctoral fellowships from FCT, Award “Stimulus for Research” from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), institutional excellence programs and held appointments as visiting scientist at the University of California (Santa Barbara, USA), the Gladstone Institute of Immunology and Virology (San Francisco, USA), and the MRC Biostatistics Unit (Cambridge, UK). The main funders of her current research are Aidsfonds, FCT and ZonMw.
Personal webpage

Andrea Sartore-Bianchi, MD, University of Milan, Italy 

orcid.org/0000-0003-0780-0409
Research areas: Clinical oncology, Gastrointestinal cancers, Colorectal cancer, EGFR, ctDNA, Clinical trials

Andrea Sartore-BianchiAndrea Sartore-Bianchi is Medical Oncologist at Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda in Milano, Italy, where he is in charge of the Clinical Molecular Oncology Unit at the Department of Hematology, Oncology and Molecular Medicine. He is Associate Professor of Oncology at the University of Milano (La Statale). He received his MD and postgraduate degree in Oncology at the University of Pavia, Italy, and subsequently conducted preclinical research at the Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Cancer Therapeutics Division at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. Prof. Sartore-Bianchi’s main clinical and research interests include precision oncology and the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, particularly colorectal carcinomas, focusing on biomarkers of sensitivity/resistance to molecular-targeted therapies. He is principal and co-investigator in Phase I-III clinical trials for solid tumors and carried out seminal studies regarding RAS and Her2 as tumor tissue or ctDNA biomarkers for guiding treatment in colorectal cancer. He published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles in various medical journals including first/corresponding authorship in The Lancet Oncology, Nature Medicine, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Personal webpage

Amand Floriaan Schmidt, PhD, University College London, UK

orcid.org/0000-0003-1327-0424
Research areas: Genetically guided drug development, Mendelian randomisation, machine learning, network analytics.

Amand Floriaan Schmidt headshotA. Floriaan Schmidt has received training in public health, clinical epidemiology, and mathematics and statistics. Floriaan completed a PhD on methods for personalized medicine with the Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Following his PhD, he accepted a position with University College London (UCL). Currently, Floriaan has a joined position with Amsterdam university medical centres and UCL. His research focusses on developing and applying human genetics for drug target validation. Additionally, Floriaan conducts research to improve risk prediction modelling for patient subgroups by integrating electronic healthcare records data with information from multi-model sources including genomics and metabolomics.
Personal webpage

 

Kellie Smith, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, USA 

Research areas: tumor immunology, immunotherapy, immunogenomics, T cell immunology, T cell biology

Kellie SmithDr. Smith, a Baltimore, MD native, completed her doctoral work at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine under the direction of Dr. Charles R. Rinaldo with a focus on T cell immunology and immunotherapy. During her fellowship training at Johns Hopkins, she worked under the mentorship of Dr. Drew M. Pardoll identifying the correlates of response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in patients with multiple tumor histologies, with a specific emphasis on early and advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer. She joined the faculty in early 2016 and has since become the translational lead on many immunotherapy clinical trials aimed at improving treatment options, preventing disease recurrence, and understanding the predictors of response to treatment in both early and advanced stage cancer.
Personal webpage

Arun R Sridhar, MD, University of Washington, USA

Research areas: Atrial Fibrillation, Cardiac Arrhythmia Mapping and Ablation, Digital Health, Computerized simulations of arrhythmias , Artificial intelligence in arrhythmia management

Arun SridharDr Arun Sridhar is a Cardiologist specialized in interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology and an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. He treats patients with common and complex heart rhythm disorders, as well as patients with a risk of sudden cardiac death. His procedural expertise includes catheter ablations for atrial, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias; and implantation of cardiac device therapy including pacemakers and defibrillators. Dr. Sridhar’s research focuses on improving patient outcomes in atrial and ventricular arrhythmias through novel arrhythmia mapping and ablation techniques. His team also works on many innovative digital solutions to optimize care of cardiac arrhythmia patients both long term as well as peri-procedurally. They use novel low-cost mobile health technologies in concert with advanced computing techniques such as machine learning to create pathways for personalized medicine for arrhythmia patients, and making arrhythmia care more accessible.

Xinyi Su, MB, BChir, PhD, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, A*STAR, Singapore

orcid.org/0000-0002-1480-6713
Research areas: Biomedical Engineering, Ocular Therapeutics, Biomaterials, Stem Cell Regenerative Medicine, Tissue Engineering, Gene Therapy, RNA therapeutics

Xinyi SuXinyi Su, MB BChir PhD, is an ophthalmologist and vitreo-retinal surgeon at the National University Hospital of Singapore. She is the Divisional Director at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB, A*STAR) and Research Director of the Department of Ophthalmology (NUS). She runs a broad research program in retinal diseases as Senior Principal Investigator of Translational Retinal Therapeutics Lab at IMCB and Clinician-Scientist at the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI). Her research in retinal therapeutics has been published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Advanced Materials, Nature Communications, among others. She received Ten Outstanding Young Person Award (TOYP) in 2022, Asia Pacific Vitreo-retinal Society LDP Gold Medal Award in 2021, Eye and Vision Health Distinguished Award in 2021 and Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology SSO Young Ophthalmologist Award for two consecutive years 2019 and 2020. Xinyi has a career total of >$SGD$20 million in competitive research grants, and currently leads several translational research program on retinal cell therapy.
Personal webpage

Kazuki Sugahara, MD, PhD, Columbia University, USA 

orcid.org/0000-0002-4946-192X
Research areas: Gastrointestinal cancer surgery, Pancreatic cancer, cancer therapy delivery

Dr. Kazuki N. Sugahara is a surgeon scientist at Columbia University who specializes in pancreatic cancer. Dr. Sugahara studies drug delivery systems to enhance cancer diagnosis and therapy, and holds multiple patents related to his discoveries. He has developed various tumor-targeting peptides as a drug delivery scaffold including the iRGD tumor-penetrating peptide, which is now in multiple phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and other GI cancers in several countries. Dr. Sugahara also uses his peptides as a tool to discover targetable novel signatures in the tumor microenvironment. Using this approach, he has developed an immunotherapy approach that is now being validated in cancer patients.
Personal webpage

Patrick Walker, PhD, Imperial College London, UK

orcid.org/0000-0002-9596-9628
Research areas: Mathematical modelling, malaria transmission dynamics and burden, COVID-19 dynamics, malaria in pregnancy, malaria surveillance

Patrick WalkerDr Patrick Walker is a Lecturer in Infectious Disease Epidemiology within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analytics at Imperial College London (UK). His work primarily focuses upon mathematical models of the dynamics of malaria transmission and burden with a particular focus upon malaria in pregnancy. A key current research interest is the use of data collected from pregnant women attending antenatal care to better improve malaria surveillance and prevention, both in pregnant women and as a sentinel surveillance resource to measure wider community trends. Recently he has been heavily involved in the centre’s COVID-19 response team leading work on projecting the global impact of the disease and options for mitigation and suppression of transmission.
Personal webpage

Yinghui Wei, PhD, University of Plymouth, UK

orcid.org/0000-0002-7873-0009
Research areas: Statistical methods and modelling, infectious disease epidemiology, clinical trials, observational studies, evidence synthesis, meta-analysis

Yinghui Wei headshotDr Yinghui Wei is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Plymouth. Her primary research interests include the development of statistical methodology and the substantive applications to medicine, clinical trials, observational studies and evidence synthesis, as well as using data to answer health-related research questions.
Personal webpage

 

 

Xiaolin Xu, PhD, MMed, BMed, Zhejiang University, China

orcid.org/0000-0002-8203-9878
Research areas: Chronic disease epidemiology; Life-course Epidemiology; Cohort Study and Longitudinal Data Analysis; Global Health

Xiaolin Xu Xiaolin Xu (PhD, MMed, BMed) is a tenure-track assistant professor (hundred talents program) at the School of Public Health and research professor (joint appointment) at the Second Affiliated Hospital School of Medicine, Zhejiang University. He is also an adjunct research fellow at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland (Australia). His research interests include the epidemiology and prevention of multiple risk factors and chronic diseases (multimorbidity) using life-course approaches, promotion of women’s health, and implementations of big data in clinical and public health practice. Research from these major studies have contributed to his career for over 100 scientific papers, book chapters, and technical and policy reports. He has received funding from national and international agencies, including China Medical Board and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support his research. He was the recipient of World Ranking of Top 2% Scientists (2023). He was formerly a research assistant in the Global Health Research Center at Duke Kunshan University. He also worked and interned in a healthcare consulting company in Shanghai and London, and the Headquarter of the World Health Organization in Geneva.
Personal webpage

Joo Heung Yoon, MD, University of Pittsburgh, USA

orcid.org/0000-0002-0127-8384
Research areas: machine learning; artificial intelligence; critical care medicine; pulmonary medicine; cardiovascular physiology

Joo Heung YoonDr. Yoon is an NIH-funded physician-scientist with focus on the signal processing and development of machine learning (ML) models using multigranular ICU data for the prediction and treatment of the critically-ill conditions. Clinically, he is a board-certified pulmonologist and critical care medicine physician. Dr. Yoon has a broad interest in ML model development, implementation, and human-computer interaction (HCI).
Personal webpage

 

Di Yu, PhD, The University of Queensland, Australia

orcid.org/0000-0003-1721-8922
Research areas: Immunology, autoimmune disease, infection, cancer, immunotherapy

Di YuDr Di Yu is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute in Brisbane, Australia. He received his PhD from the Australian National University in 2007 and postdoctoral training at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research till 2010. Before joining the University of Queensland, he was a faculty member at Monash University from 2011 and the Australian National University ANU from 2017-2019. He leads the research team to investigate the mechanisms underlying the operations of T cell functional subsets cells in human health and disease, and aim to design new strategies to monitor personal immune status and modulate immune pathways to treat autoimmune diseases, infection and cancer.
Personal webpage

Amir Zarrinpar, MD, PhD, University of California San Diego, USA

orcid.org/0000-0001-6423-5982
Research areas: Microbiome, circadian rhythms, metabolism, obesity, NAFLD, engineered probiotics, precision medicine

Amir ZarrinparDr Amir Zarrinpar is a physician scientist whose primary research is focused on the interactions of circadian biology, gut physiology and gut microbiome in the genesis of obesity and metabolic syndrome and involves manipulations of gut luminal environment (both content and bacteria) to disclose this link. He is also a board-certified gastroenterologist with an interest in obesity and NAFLD/NASH, and based in the USA. He obtained A.B. degree in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard University and M.D./Ph.D. from UC San Diego, and residency and fellowship at UC San Diego. During his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute, he showed time-restricted feeding restores normal circadian regulation and prevents adverse effects of diet-induced obesity, that the gut microbiome is circadian and its cyclical fluctuations are important for metabolism, and antibiotic-induced microbiome depletion alters systemic metabolic homeostasis via effects on gut signaling and metabolism. After establishing his own laboratory as Assistant Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego in 2017, he began demonstrating that genetically engineered native gut bacteria achieve targeted manipulations of metabolism and alleviate a pathologic phenotype in mice. He is a recipient of AASLD Liver Scholar Award and AGA Microbiome Junior Investigator Award. His research has been supported by a NIDDK/NIH, NHLBI/NIH, NIMH/NIH, AFAR, Prevent Cancer Foundation, NPKUA, and the AHA.
Personal webpage

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