Editorial Board Members

orcid.org/0000-0003-0650-135
Research interests: Type 2 diabetes, venous thrombosis, genome-wide association studies, metabolomics study, twin modeling, mental health (personality research)

Ruifang Li (a.k.a. Ruifang Li-Gao for publications) was originally trained as a computer scientist and bioinformatician (BSc and MSc). She has been working as a research assistant in the area of chemoinformatics (at Bonn University, Germany) and neuroscience (at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany) from 2010 till 2014. From 2014 to 2020, she obtained her PhD degree in Clinical Epidemiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Netherlands. During her PhD, her main research focus was on untangling the metabolic and genetic basis of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases by using large-scale population based cohort studies. Currently, she worked as a postdoc at Tilburg University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She aims to use multi-omics approach to investigate the biological mechanisms of Type D (distressed) personality, and its relationship to diseases. She also acts as an associate editor (and statistical reviewer) for the journals of BMC Endocrine Disorders and BMC Cardiovascular Disorders since October 2020. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0002-4114-9106
Research interests: Evidence-Based Practice; Primary Care; Low value care; Overdiagnosis; Non-communicable Diseases; Clinical Epidemiology

Loai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare. His research expertise includes evidence synthesis, evidence-based practice, healthcare services, and primary care. He is a medical doctor (MD) from Palestine and completed a Master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, followed by a PhD degree in evidence-based practice from Bond University, Australia. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-5637-3971
Research interests: Life course epidemiology; public health; general population studies; longitudinal studies; musculoskeletal disorders; rehabilitation medicine; osteoporosis. 

Petteri obtained his MD-PhD degree at the University of Oulu, Finland. His PhD dissertation in 2017 addressed the life-course determinants of vertebral size, a known contributor to vertebral fracture risk. Alongside clinical work at various medical institutions, Petteri currently serves as a post-doc fellow at the University of Oulu, with diverse research activity in life-course epidemiology and public health. His particular interest is in general population studies with longitudinal data on demographic, psychosocial, behavioural and clinical dimensions. Webpage.

Research interests: diabetes, hyperlipidemia, dementia, stroke, atherosclerosis, acne, primary care, routine healthcare data, pharmacoepidemiology, systematic review and meta-analysis

Zhirong completed a PhD in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at University of Cambridge. He also holds a bachelor's degree in medicine and master's degrees in epidemiology and in primary care research. He was a research fellow in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard University in 2018. Before his PhD, he worked as a biostatistician in Shantou-Oxford Clinical Research Unit and then as a research associate in Peking University School of Public Health. His current research interests are in the use of routine healthcare data and evidence synthesis to inform the management of cardiovascular diseases, dementia and diabetes. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-6953-0163
Research interests: Physical activity, exercise, aging, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, reproducibility, research integrity

Daniel received his BSc in kinesiology (exercise sciences) from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Having a primary interest in exercise interventions in clinical conditions, he studied physical activity in context of aging, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes during his MSc and PhD. He established two main interests during a postdoctoral fellowship: (1) clinical trials and systematic reviews/meta-analyses of lifestyle interventions; and (2) meta-research in science dissemination practices. Daniel is based in Porto Alegre (Brazil), working as an assistant professor of research methods, chief of the clinical research center at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, and an academic mentor for graduate students and postdocs. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-6774-3149
Research interests: Alcohol; coronary heart disease; stroke; small vessel disease; Mendelian randomization; GWAS

Steven is an Epidemiologist based within the Stroke Research Group at the University of Cambridge with an interest in cardiovascular disease and related conditions.
His work utilises genome-wide association studies (GWAS) alongside bioinformatic approaches to obtain insights in disease aetiology. This includes applying techniques such as Mendelian randomization to prioritise therapeutic targets and inform clinical or public health decision making.
More widely, he has an interest in individual participant data meta-analysis, the use of electronic health records in medical research, the application and integration of various “-omic” technologies (e.g. metabolomics, proteomics, phenomics), machine learning and modelling of longitudinal data. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-9543-8360
Research interests: Global Health, Malaria, RSV, Child Health, Childhood Immunization, Health Access, Population health

Emelda heads the Population Health Unit within the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya which aims to understand determinants of health transitions and vulnerabilities at fine scales across Africa and works to embed the use of data for decision-making by national ministries. Emelda has 20 years of Population and Public Health research experience. Deep expertise in Impact evaluation, epidemiology, public health, statistics, data analytics and operations research with a focus on evaluations and contribution analysis. Prior to this position Emelda was a Program Officer/Gates Fellow within the Global Health Team at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. She has worked on evaluating the public health impact of malaria control, on evaluating anti-retroviral treatment programs while at IHME and on developing strategies for primary health care at Philips Research Africa. Emelda has a PhD in Epidemiology, has been awarded two internationally competitive Wellcome Trust (UK) Fellowships and is widely published. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-2936
Research interests: global health, nutrition, tuberculosis, malnutrition, stunting, wasting, anaemia, micronutrients, infectious diseases, nutritional immunity, epidemiology, maternal and child health, Tuberculosis control programmes, sickle cell disease

I am an Associate Professor at LSHTM with a joint appointment at the School of Tropical Medicine & Global Health, Nagasaki University in Japan. I am trained in biochemistry, immunology, epidemiology and public health nutrition. Before my appointment in Japan, I spent most of my research career living and working in West and then East Africa working on malaria in pregnancy, then malaria associated anaemia in children, which led onto work in sickle cell disease. My research interests are focused on interactions between nutrition and disease, mostly infections, and malnutrition in maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries. Much of my current work is trying to better describe the causes and effects of undernutrition, diabetes and transient hyperglycaemia in Tuberculosis; how they can be prevented, diagnosed and managed in persons with TB disease, with research in Asia and the Western Pacific Region. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-5126-1225 
Research interests: malaria, sepsis, antimicrobial resistance, paediatrics, quality of care, dehydration, malnutrition

Sam (MBChB, MMED (Paediatrics), Dphil) is a principal investigator at the KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Programme, Nairobi, a honorary lecturer at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a Visiting Research Fellow, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He is a consultant paediatrician and clinical epidemiologist with research interest in severe febrile illnesses in children. His research spans understanding epidemiology of severe febrile illnesses in children, clinical trials, investigation of effectiveness of treatments in children admitted with severe illnesses, antimicrobial resistance, application of machine learning techniques and data science for biomedical clinical data, and in design of appropriate digital solutions for identification and management of paediatric sepsis. He runs an inpatient surveillance to answer questions of safety following introduction of new interventions, such a recently introduced malaria vaccine in Kenya, and to understand how compliance with clinical guidelines affect in-hospital survival. He is involved in teaching and supervision of postgraduate and doctorate students, is a peer reviewer for several medical journals and research funders and provides technical consultation to global bodies involved in health such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-5483-9985
Research interests: Cellular and humoral immunology of parasite and viral infections; Vaccine candidate discovery, design and testing; Pathogen biology

Dr. Kwadwo Asamoah Kusi is a Senior Research Fellow in the Immunology Department of Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), University of Ghana. He started his career at NMIMR in 2012 after graduating with a PhD in Medicine from Leiden University Medical Centre, based on his work at Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. His research has been on assessing pathogen-induced cellular and humoral immune responses, with a special focus on Plasmodium falciparum. He is currently working on identifying HLA-restricted epitopes that elicit protection-associated T cell responses in individuals with a natural history of P. falciparum infection. He is principal investigator of an EDCTP2-funded Senior Fellowship that is investigating the impact of hepatitis B and Plasmodium co-infections on the liver. He is lead Immunologist on an on-going phase Ib clinical trial of an Inovio Pharmaceuticals Lassa fever vaccine at NMIMR as well as on a combined trial of measles/COVID-19 live vaccines for cross protection in Ghana, as part of a multi-centre trial under the CROWN CORONATION umbrella. He has on-going studies on multi-allele vaccine formulation strategies that aim to overcome the strain-dependent effects of polymorphisms in immunogenic Plasmodium antigens on antigen-specific immune responses. Webpage. 

orcid.org/0000-0003-4777-388X
Research interests: infectious disease epidemiology; infectious disease modeling; vaccine; health economics

Kathy Leung received her BS in Biological Sciences from School of Life Sciences and BA in Economics from China Center for Economic Research at Peking University, MPhil, and PhD from School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong. In recent years, Kathy is interested in mathematical modelling of a wide range of diseases such as influenza, MERS, COVID-19, hand-foot-and-mouth disease, HPV, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. She also conducts epidemiological and economic evaluations of disease intervention strategies, such as HMFD vaccination, public health and social measures against COVID-19, and risk-based breast cancer screening. Leveraged on the latest development of data science, she also uses machine learning to interpret SARS-CoV-2 genomic data and participates in the development of tools to tackle misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination with natural language processing. Kathy is a member of HKU’s COVID-19 Response Team and has contributed to the earliest studies about COVID-19 epidemiology. She is an investigator of the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D²4H) at the Hong Kong Science Park. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0001-9291-1511
Research interests: Health economics, infectious disease modelling, TB, HIV, cost-effectiveness analyses, choice modelling

I am a health economist specialising in the prevention of infectious diseases, working at the interface of mathematical modelling and health economics. I enjoy the challenge of representing complex human behaviours in models and understanding how to encourage equitable and efficient health. My work mainly focuses on HIV and TB. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0003-0471-6746
Research interests: Sporotrichosis, subcutaneous mycoses, fungal infections, epidemiology, viral hepatitis (A, B, C, D and E), dengue, SARS-CoV-2

Max is a PhD Researcher at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru. He has a BSc and completed a Master’s degree in Public Health at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru. He is a professor and researcher in epidemiology and infectious diseases. His research expertise includes evidence synthesis, clinical and epidemiological aspects of fungal infections and infectious diseases. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals that explore clinical and epidemiological aspects of sporotrichosis, chromoblastomycosis, and superficial mycoses, and infectious diseases (HAV, HBV, HCV, dengue, SARS-CoV-2, and cutaneous leishmaniosis). He also works in managing funds in research and improving evaluation and selection processes in Peru. He is currently the Associate/Academic Editor and Editorial Board Member for various international journals. He also acts as an associate editor for the journals of BMC Cancer and BMC Infectious Diseases since May 2019. He serves as peer reviewer for various leading journals, and is a Top Peer Reviewer in Publons, Web of Science. Webpage. 

orcid.org/0000-0002-5371-2138
Research Interests: Infectious disease epidemiology, mathematical modelling, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, serology, immunology, arbovirus, dengue, influenza, SARS-CoV-2

Dr. Lin Wang is a Research Associate in the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge. Before joining Cambridge, he was a chargé de recherché in the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease Unit at the Institute Pasteur, and a postdoctoral fellow in the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, the University of Hong Kong. He has a PhD in Electronic Engineering from Fudan University, MSc and BSc in Physics from Nankai University and Southeast University, respectively. His research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, mathematical modelling, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, serology, immunology, and viral evolution, with applications to arbovirus (e.g. dengue) and emerging diseases (e.g., pandemic influenza, SARS-CoV-2). Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8696-8594
Research interests: Genetic epidemiology, epigenetic epidemiology, twin research, family research, cancer risk prediction, breast cancer

Dr Shuai Li is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The University of Melbourne. Dr Li is trained in medicine and epidemiology, with a Bachelor of Medicine degree and a Master of Science degree obtained in Peking University, and a PhD degree obtained in the University of Melbourne in 2018. From 2018 to 2020, he worked at the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Cambridge University. Dr Li’s research interests include genetic and epigenetic epidemiology of cancers, twin and family research, and cancer risk modelling. Webpage. 

europepmc.org/authors/0000-0002-6927-3360
Research interests: Cancer epidemiology, cancer prevention, cancer risk factors, cohort studies, metabolomics, biomarkers, omics technologies, nutrition

Joseph is a molecular epidemiologist and researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). His main focus is understanding cancer, metabolic diseases and their risk factors, such as nutrition and environmental exposures, in the context of primary prevention. He aims to bring together traditional epidemiology and molecular techniques such as -omics technologies to aid the understanding of these diseases and contribute to their prevention.
Initially trained as a laboratory bioanalyst, he spent the early part of his career operating and maintaining instruments such as mass spectrometers for studies of various design on nutrition and health. This led him to specialise in metabolomics and these days he has traded the laboratory bench for epidemiological data analyses and programming. His recent research pertains to colorectal and breast cancer, with large metabolomics datasets frequently put to use. He is a proponent of reproducible research and a fan of open-source code and version control. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0003-3150-2751
Research interests: Biotherapy, Immunotherapy, Liquid biopsy, Tumor microenvironment, Biomarkers, Metastasis, Cancer stem cell

I am a Research Associate in the Department of Immunology, Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College. I am trained in Bioengineering, with a Bachelor degree obtained in China Agricultural University, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology obtained in the Beijing Normal University in 2018. My research focuses on cancer biotherapy and immunotherapy, especially the application of oncolytic viruses. Similarly, I am also interested in the influence of the tumor microenvironment on tumor therapy. In addition, part of my work has focused on liquid biopsy, especially clinical applications of circulating tumor cells. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0003-1461-556X
Research interests: Longitudinal Data Analysis; Electronic Health Records; Cognitive Decline; Multimorbidity, Polypharmacy

Dr. Rebecca Bendayan is based at the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King´s College London. She is an expert in longitudinal data analyses and her research aims to identify early predictors of cognitive decline in older adults. Specifically, she is interested in understanding which health conditions are more likely to co-exist, how they develop over the life course and how they relate to cognitive ageing. Dr. Bendayan leads different projects which use longitudinal clinical health records to address the challenge of multimorbidity in UK health care system. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0002-3821-6187
Research interests: multi-omics; genetic epidemiology; bioinformatics; biostatistics

Dr. Chao Xu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. He is a member of the Stephenson Cancer Center Biostatistics and Research Design Shared Resource. He received his PhD in Biostatistics from Tulane University, US. He has a broad background in statistical genetics, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and genetic epidemiology, with specific training and expertise in genetic and genomic studies of complex diseases, such as the osteoporosis and cancer. Webpage.

orcid.org/0000-0003-4172-4307
Research interests: Cardiovascular disease epidemiology, prevention, hypertension, heart failure

Dr. Jeemon Panniyammakal in his research career spanning over 1.5 decades at the national level, developed a focus on prevention and control of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in India with an emphasis on improving primary care. He was involved in several large epidemiological studies and clinical trials such as: (a) the ADVANCE study (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease), (b) UMPIRE trial (Use of a Multidrug Pill In Reducing cardiovascular Events) trial, (c) STICH trial (Surgical Intervention for Ischemic Heart failure Trial), (d) Sentinel surveillance Study in Indian industrial population, (e) quality improvement programs in acute coronary syndrome, (f) health system and policy research in primary care (management of hypertension, diabetes and multi-morbidity in primary care), and (g) acute coronary syndrome and heart failure registries in India in various capacities. Dr. Jeemon is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, and Senior Clinical Fellow of the Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Dr. Jeemon’s current focus of research is in improving the quality of care in primary care settings for patients with multi-morbidity. Currently, he is holding a major research grant from Medical Research Council UK, NHMRC (Australia), NHLBI (USA), World Diabetes Foundation, and Indian Council of Medical Research. He has been also awarded the prestigious Senior Fellowship from the DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance (2021-2026) to develop a novel model for management of heart failure with mHealth support. Webpage.