Global Collaborators

Professor Larson is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is a Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also s Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and a Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions and influence policies. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery, and building public trust.

Professor Douglas is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is a Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is a pharmacoepidemiologist and previously studied physiology and completed a PhD in Manchester. Since then he has spent several years at the UK Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and in the pharmaceutical industry investigating adverse effects of drugs – both in clinical trials and post-marketing.

Professor Jit is the Co-Investigator of the two programmes namely “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) and “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

Professor Jit is the inaugural chair and a professor in the Department of Global and Environmental Health, School of Global Public Health at New York University. He was formerly head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology & Dynamics and co-director of the Global Health Economics Centre (GHECO) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He holds honorary appointments at LSHTM as well as the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

His research focuses on epidemiological and economic modeling of vaccines to support evidence-based public health decision making. He has published papers covering a range of vaccine-preventable or potentially vaccine-preventable diseases including COVID-19, measles, HPV, pneumococcus, rotavirus, influenza, Group B Streptococcus, dengue, EV71 and RSV as well as methodological papers advancing the ways vaccines are evaluated. This work has influenced many of the major changes to immunization policy in countries around the world. Dr. Jit has served on a number of expert advisory committees in the UK as well as for international organizations such as the World Health Organization. He also organises or contributes to academic and professional courses on vaccine modeling, economics and decision science around the world.

He received his BSc and PhD in Mathematics from University College London, specializing in mathematical biology, and a Master of Public Health degree from King’s College London.

Dr Paterson is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Co-director of The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCR) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has been researching issues of public confidence in immunisations since 2010. Her specific research activities include qualitative analysis of parental reasons for not vaccinating their child with influenza vaccine in England, analysis of concerns surrounding HPV vaccine in India and Japan, and a systematic review on public trust in vaccination.

Professor Rees is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is Dean and Professor of Cognitive Neurology in the Faculty of Life Science at the University College London (UCL). He was the Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Deputy Head of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at UCL. He leads a research group investigating the neural basis of human consciousness based at the ICN and the internationally renowned Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. He set up and currently directs the UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences Academic Careers Office which provides strategic leadership for the biomedical training portfolio at UCL and talent management to investigators and students across the School.

Professor Wei is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is a Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety Research at the University College London. Prior to moving to London, she was a lecturer in epidemiology and medical statistics in the Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO), University of Dundee and had more than 10 years’ work experience in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety research. Her research area covers pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, healthcare databases, drug utilisation and safety research in cardiovascular disease.

Dr Lau is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is a Lecturer in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, School of Pharmacy of the University College London. She is a statistician by background and her research focuses on using large electronic databases to answer important clinical questions regarding the effects of medications, particularly those used in cardiovascular diseases, neurological and mental health conditions.

Professor Holmes is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Metagenomic Platform to Identify Emerging Pathogens” (Programme 2) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He holds various academic and research positions at the University of Sydney and is known for his work on the evolution and emergence of infectious diseases, particularly the mechanisms by which RNA viruses jump species boundaries to emerge in humans and other animals. He currently holds an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship. He has studied the emergence and spread of such pathogens as SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus, dengue virus, HIV, hepatitis C virus, myxoma virus, RHDV and Yersinia pestis.

Dr Patrick is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer, Early Career Development Fellow and Director of Teaching Program (Statistics) in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He is also a staff member at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research. He obtained his PhD in statistical bioinformatics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University. In his postdoctoral studies, he worked as a computational biologist with joint appointments at Brigham and Women’s hospital, Harvard Medical School and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to investigate the molecular drivers of Alzheimer’s disease and MS.

Dr Tarr is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics and Data Science, and the Associate Head (Education) in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He is a statistician and data scientist with expertise in feature selection in complex data and predictive modelling. He has strong industry ties, particularly with meat processing and pastoral industries, and he is the statistical and methodological advisor on the Meat Standards Australia Beef Pathways Committee.

Professor Yang is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is a Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, and a Member of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. She is an applied statistician with expertise in statistical bioinformatics. Her research stands at the interface between medicine and methodology development and has centred on the development of methods and the application of statistics to problems in -omics and biomedical research.

Professor Kim is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sydney in 2005 and currently holds a number of academic and research positions in the School of Computer Science of the University. As an active key member of the BMIT Research Group, he is in charge of a research commercialisation and industry links. He has produced a number of impact publications, including IEEE Transactions, Medical Image Analysis, etc.

Dr Yang is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He heads the Computational Trans-Regulatory Biology Group at Charles Perkins Centre, and is an Associate Professor of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He holds a conjoint appointment as Group Leader of Computational Systems Biology Group at Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), at the Westmead Research Hub. His research lies at the interface of bioinformatics and systems biology.

Professor Simpson is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

Professor Simpson is a Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, and the Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney (USYD). He spent 22 years at the University of Oxford, first in Experimental Psychology, then in the Department of Zoology and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, before returning to Australia in 2005 as an ARC Federation Fellow. He worked with Professor David Raubenheimer of USYD to develop an integrative modelling framework for nutrition (the Geometric Framework), which was devised and tested using insects.

Dr Ng is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is the Vice President of Tencent Healthcare and is currently leading Tencent’s healthcare business. He first started his career as a medical doctor where he was the chief resident at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. He then moved to the US to become a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company where he co-led the Greater China Healthcare Practice. He then joined the Gates Foundation as the deputy director of the China Country Office, responsible for the health and innovation portfolio.

He is also serving as an advisor to WHO’s Digital Health Technical Advisory Group, and an honorary associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine.

Dr Yom-Tov is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is currently the Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Israel. Before joining Microsoft, he worked with Yahoo Research, IBM Research (where he held the title of Master Inventor), and Rafael. His primary research interests are in applications of information retrieval, large-scale machine learning, and social analysis to health and medicine.