Professor Julie Simpson is a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow, Head of Biostatistics and Deputy Head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, and chief investigator of the Australian NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for Malaria Elimination.
Julie has 25 years of experience working in biostatistics teaching and research positions, and has led and collaborated on many research projects (laboratory, clinical trials and large-scale population studies), illustrating her broad knowledge of study design and statistical methodology.
Her primary area of research is the bridging of novel statistical and mathematical modelling approaches to inform treatment policy for malaria and she has been an advisor to the World Health Organization, Medicines for Malaria Venture and the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network regarding dosing regimens for current and new antimalarial drugs. Her research has generated evidence that has led to revised dosing recommendations for antimalarial regimens and improved sampling designs for antimalarial pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic studies.
Her other main research interest is the application of complex statistical methods to answer important public health questions in longitudinal observational cohorts, in particular, the implementation of multiple imputation for handling missing data.
Dr Martin Walker leads the schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth research theme, a collaborative global forum for sharing and analysing data to improve treatment outcomes for these neglected poverty-related diseases.
Martin is a Lecturer and Assistant Professor in Epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London and an Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London. His core research interests lie in big data analytics and mathematical modelling applied to the treatment, control and elimination of parasitic infectious diseases. Martin previously led the ‘QuoVadis’ project (World Health Organization), improving methods for monitoring and evaluating responses to the drugs used for Preventative Chemotherapy of human helminthiases.
Maria-Gloria Basáñez is a Professor of Neglected Tropical Diseases at Imperial College London. Maria-Gloria did her MSc in Medical Entomology and Applied Parasitology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine with Sandy Trees and her PhD in Mathematical Epidemiology at Imperial College London with Roy Anderson. Her teaching and research at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology (School of Public Health) of Imperial College has focused on the population biology and transmission dynamics of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and vector-borne infections. She has published on trachoma, intestinal nematode infections, malaria, Chagas disease, schistosomiasis and filarial parasites.
Under the umbrella of the NTD Modelling Consortium and the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research, her research group is currently developing, refining and comparing mathematical models of River Blindness to support ongoing control and elimination efforts. Maria-Gloria has served in the Mectizan Expert Committee of the Mectizan Donation Programme, the Programme Coordinating Committee of the Onchocerciasis Elimination Programme for the Americas, the Disease Reference Group on Human Helminthiases of the World Health Organization/TDR, and the Global Burden of Disease 2010 Study. She is the current President of the British Society for Parasitology. She has published more than 150 papers ranging from entomological and parasitological studies to dynamic and statistical modelling of tropical diseases and has been a member of the Editorial/Advisory Board of Parasitology, International Journal for Parasitology, Trends in Parasitology, Advances in Parasitology and Parasites & Vectors.
Together with Roy Anderson, Maria-Gloria has edited two volumes on “Mathematical Models for Neglected Tropical Diseases: Essential Tools for Control and Elimination, Parts A and B”, published by Advances in Parasitology, respectively in 2015 and 2016 (see reviews here).
Paul joined IDDO in January 2018 as an EDCTP/TDR fellow from the Clinical Research Unit of Nanora in Burkina Faso. He trained as a molecular parasitologist and is interested in Malaria and other parasitic infectious diseases. Over the past five years, his research focusses on assessing the efficacy of antimalarial drugs, studying the genetic diversity of Plasmodium falciparum and exploring the molecular markers associated with antimalarial drug resistance.
Prof Feiko ter Kuile joined WWARN in 2016 as Head of the Malaria in Pregnancy Scientific Group. He is Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Prof ter Kuile is a clinical epidemiologist who trained in medicine at the Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam. He previously worked at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), the University of Amsterdam, and Mahidol University. Prof ter Kuile then worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), first as a research epidemiologist at the CDC field station in Kisumu, Western Kenya for 6 years, then as a senior medical epidemiologist based in Atlanta, GA, USA for 2 years. Since 2007, Prof ter Kuile has led the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), and is currently based at the Centre for Global Health Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in Kisumu. His main research interests include the epidemiology of malaria and the evaluation of new interventions for the control of malaria in children and pregnant women.
Prof Karen Barnes, based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, has served as the Head of the Pharmacology Group in WWARN since 2009. Karen has twenty years of experience in clinical pharmacology and pharmacokinetics. Appointed Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Cape Town in 2008, Karen has more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in malaria. Her main research interests includes the comprehensive evaluation of malaria treatment policy changes in Southern Africa and improving anti-malarial dosing regimens for vulnerable populations. Karen serves as an advisor to several WHO Expert Groups on malaria.
A/Prof Rob Commons is an Infectious Diseases Physician in Ballarat, Australia and a Principal Research Fellow at the Menzies School of Health Research, Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia. His research focuses on optimising the radical cure of vivax malaria through data synthesis methods and he has led multiple WWARN study groups, undertaking individual patient data meta-analyses to improve the efficacy and safety of antimalarial treatment for Plasmodium vivax. He is mentored by Professor Ric Price from Menzies School of Health Research and Professor Julie Simpson from The University of Melbourne.
Prof Ric Price was appointed Head of the Clinical Group in WWARN in 2007. He is an infectious disease physician currently on the staff at the Royal Darwin Hospital, Australia, and an honorary consultant at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Ric was appointed Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford in 2011 and and Professor of Global Health at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Australia in 2010. The focus of his academic work is the investigation of multidrug resistant malaria and devising strategies for its containment. He coordinates a field site in Papua, Indonesia investigating the diagnosis and management of drug resistant P. falciparum and P. vivax. This work spans clinical studies, epidemiology, pathophysiology, in vitro studies and molecular biology. Ric also chairs the Vivax Working Group of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN).
Dr Mehul Dhorda joined the WorldWide Antimalarial Research Network (WWARN) - now part of the IDDO network - in 2011 as a laboratory scientist and was Head of WWARN External Quality Assurance Programme, leading the laboratory activities for the WWARN Tracking Resistance to Artemisinin Collaboration Activities. He has extensive experience in molecular biology and also in clinical trials for tropical diseases in both Africa and Asia from his time spent working with Médecins Sans Frontières, Epicentre and University of Maryland School of Medicine. He serves as a member of WHO organised committees for quality assurance in malaria parasite detection and quantification. Mehul completed an MSc at Rutgers University, NJ, USA and holds a PhD in Molecular Parasitology from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France.
Professor Paul Newton is Head of the IDDO Medicine Quality Research Group. He was appointed Head of the WorldWide Antimalarial Research Network (WWARN) Antimalarial Quality Group in 2010. He was the founding Director of the Lao-Oxford-Mahosot-Wellcome Trust Research Unit (LOMWRU) in the Microbiology Laboratory of Mahosot Hospital in Vientiane, Laos, from 2000 to 2019 and now works based from Oxford. After junior doctor training in infectious disease and internal medicine in the UK, he worked in the Mahidol Oxford Research Unit in Bangkok on malaria and melioidosis for four years before moving to Laos.