Alumni
This person is a member of Sanger Institute Alumni.
I am a clinical epidemiologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Consultant in Public Health for Public Health England. I started my career in clinical medicine, qualifying from University College London Medical School before completing postgraduate specialist training in public health medicine. I was a Clinical Career Development Fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, where I completed my PhD research in the genetic epidemiology of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Current Research
My main research interest is in assessing the burden and aetiology of chronic infectious and non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries—mainly in Africa but also, more recently, in south-east Asia. In Africa, I lead and collaborate on a number of large-scale public health and genomic epidemiology studies, as well as developing frameworks for prospective case ascertainment of chronic diseases, interventional studies, and clinical trials.
I am also involved in developing a new programme of work which seeks to integrate electronic health records and functional genomics to build innovative study designs with a view to improving genetic risk assessment, prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
I combine my research activities with a commitment to public engagement; this includes initiatives to work closely with study participants and their wider community so that our research findings are communicated with greater relevance for individual and collective health and well-being.
Professional Activities
I am a member of the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research, and I continue to actively support its development and commitment to facilitating population-level health research across Africa and to building research capacity among African scientists.
In 2015 I was appointed Associate Editor of Global Health, Epidemiology & Genomics (http://gheg-journal.co.uk/), an on-line, open-access journal, published by Cambridge University Press, which is committed to publishing cross-disciplinary research that integrates population science, genomics and related technological advances to increase our understanding of human health and disease worldwide.