RESIN was co-created by Dr Michael Head and Dr Joseph Fitchett (doctoral fellow at Harvard University and Medical Director at Mologic Diagnostics). Professor James Batchelor provides senior oversight within CIRU, with additional support from Dr Rebecca Brown.
External to CIRU, there are ongoing collaborations with Professor Marie-Louise Newell (University of Southampton), Professor Rifat Atun (Harvard University), and Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).
Professor James Batchelor
James is the Director of Clinical Informatics at the University of Southampton. The Unit provides innovative informatics software and solutions to clinical and laboratory research within the Academic and NHS environment. More recently these solutions are being adopted within the Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Network and the province of Alberta. He has been a Technical Adviser to Department of health organisations such as the NCRN and NIHR regarding the implementation of large Health related systems. James also assists in the development of specialist solutions based around emerging techniques and technology. James is often a keynote speaker at international conferences on the adoption of cloud technology for clinical research. He has an interest in Information architecture; Data Protection Law; Forensic Sciences.
Dr Rebecca Brown
Rebecca Brown is a Research Fellow for the ResIn study based in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. In 2011, she received a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Manchester following which she went on to be awarded an MSc in Immunology from Imperial College, London in 2012. She has completed her PhD in Clinical Microbiology at Cardiff University during which she has worked closely with Public Health England to monitor epidemiology of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections, and to develop diagnostics and molecular typing methods for human Mycoplasmaspecies.
Dr Joseph Fitchett
Dr Joseph Fitchett is a Frank Knox Fellow in public health and infectious disease epidemiology at Harvard University, focusing on the impact of global policy on vaccines, drugs, and access to heath technologies.
In particular, Joe’s work has focused on vaccines for emerging infections, drugs for neglected diseases, and the intersection between the TB and HIV epidemics. Joe is a co-founder of the ResIn study and also a collaborator with the Global Burden of Disease study.
During his doctoral programme, he has also worked for the Gates Foundation in London on maternal and child health programmes.
Further information is available at Joseph’s ResearchGate profile, or at google scholar.
Prof Rifat Atun
Professor Rifat Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard School of Public Health, MA, USA. He has many years of research experience in global health financing and has published widely in high-impact journals in this area. In 2008-12 he was a member of the Executive Management Team of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation Cluster. He chaired the panel that made annual funding recommendations of US$ 2-2.5 billion and hence was able to gain unique insight into how investment decisions are made and how they drive the formulation of policy for infectious diseases.
Further information is available at Rifat’s ResearchGate profile, or his institutional webpage.
Prof Anthony Scott
Anthony trained in clinical infectious diseases and epidemiology before moving to the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya in 1993. He has spent most of the last 20 years in Kenya, studying pneumococcal disease and pneumonia in children and adults, and vaccines to prevent them. Anthony is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science and works in clinical paediatrics in Kilifi.
Anthony’s main research interests are in child health and vaccines in East Africa. He runs the Pneumcoccal Conjugate Vaccine Impact Study, an effectiveness evaluation of vaccine introduction in Kenya, and a series of associated studies of transmission and modelling of pneumococcal disease, evaluation of vaccine safety, and pathogen population structure.
See more information via Anthony’s institutional profile, or ResearchGate.
Additional or previous collaborators
Dr Stuart Clarke
Stuart is PI on the RESIN grant. Dr Clarke developed his independent research career in 1999 when he was Director of the Scottish Meningococcus and Pneumococcus Reference Laboratory. His research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of Streptococcus pneumoniae and other vaccine-preventable bacterial infections, particularly in relation to polysaccharide conjugate vaccines.
Dr Clarke is Reader in Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Honorary Consultant in Health Protection. He splits his time between the University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine and Health Protection Agency Microbiology Services Southampton. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in the areas mainly in the field of N. meningitidis and S. pneumoniae infection. His current work focuses on the epidemiology of pneumococcal carriage and disease in relation to polysaccharide conjugate vaccines.
See more information at Stuart’s institutional profile, or on ResearchGate.
Dr Michael Head
Michael Head is a Senior Research Fellow based in the Faculty of Medicine and the Global Health Research Institute at University of Southampton. He joined Southampton is October 2015, and prior to this was at University College London for eleven years in the Farr Institute for Health Informatics, acting as researcher and project manager on the UK Infectious Disease Research Network (IDRN). He is co-founder of the ResIn study and has been involved in leading work on mapping infectious disease research investments since 2006 (initially via the Infectious Disease Research Network). Michael has excellent links and broad knowledge of the infectious disease research community, and has authored several influential reports on IDRN outputs and priority topics. He has completed a PhD from the University of Amsterdam, has studied epidemiology to postgraduate level at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has also trained in global health, systematic reviews, health policy and data linkage. He has research interests in care homes and infectious disease (especially scabies), and also public engagement (he is a regular speaker on the subject of vaccinations and ‘anti-vaxxers’ at Skeptics in the Pub meetings around the UK, and has taken this talk into secondary schools).
Further information is available at Michael’s ResearchGate profile, or at google scholar.
Prof Rifat Atun
Professor Rifat Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard School of Public Health, MA, USA. He has many years of research experience in global health financing and has published widely in high-impact journals in this area. In 2008-12 he was a member of the Executive Management Team of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation Cluster. He chaired the panel that made annual funding recommendations of US$ 2-2.5 billion and hence was able to gain unique insight into how investment decisions are made and how they drive the formulation of policy for infectious diseases.
Further information is available at Rifat’s ResearchGate profile, or his institutional webpage.
Prof Marie-Louise Newell
Marie-Louise Newell is Professor of Global Health and has a background in Medicine, Demography and Epidemiology; her research has focused on maternal and child health, particularly infections and transmission from mother-to-child. At the University College London Institute of Child Health, she led a European cohort of HIV-infected pregnant women and their children, and was involved in research in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Since late 2005 for eight years, she has been based in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa as Director of the Wellcome Trust-funded Africa Centre for Health & Population Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal where she has initiated a broad innovative programme of research addressing the impact of HIV infection at a population, household and individual level. She established a partnership with the SA Department of Health in the Hlabisa sub-district to provide HIV treatment and care, resulting in more than 28,500 HIV-infected people initiated on treatment by mid-2013. Recent research from the Centre has shown that the HIV treatment provided in the public programme has resulted in a substantial reduction of adult and child mortality, and has started to have an impact on HIV incidence. However, with success also comes concern: her interest in infections in pregnant women and their children is now moving to evaluating the mid- and longer term implications of exposure to infections and treatment for the woman and her child. She reviews for a large number of expert journals, is member of international expert review bodies and was appointed a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012 and a Fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2013.
Now at Southampton, she is focusing on research on the mid- and longer term consequences of exposure to HIV and its treatment in fetal and early life for children born to HIV infected mothers, as well as continue to evaluate HIV prevention interventions. Marie-Louise is also leading on the development of a Global Health Research Institute at Southampton.
See more information at Marie-Louise’s institutional profile, or on ResearchGate.
Amos Lichtman
Amos is a Masters of Public Health student at the Harvard School of Public Health, and is in his final year of M.D. studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He began working with the ResIn study in 2014, while studying under Dr. Rifat Atun at HSPH. He completed his Sc.B. in neuroscience at Brown University, and also has been involved epidemiological research and systematic reviews.
Damilola Soyode
Damilola Soyode is currently a Master of Public Health student at Harvard School of Public Health focusing on global health and an M.D. candidate in her final year at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She received a BSc in biology from Imperial College London, UK where she concentrated on infectious agents and epidemiology. She became part of the ResIn study in 2014.
Vaitehi Nageshwaran
Vaitehi is currently a final year medical student at Imperial College London. She completed her BSc in Immunity and Infectious Diseases in 2013. She is a member of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), and as such is particularly interested in the role of universities in infectious disease research.
Charlie Zhou
Charlie Zhou is a final year medical student at the University of Oxford. He received a BA in Pathology in 2013 from the University of Cambridge, specializing in cancer and virology. He joined the ResIn study in 2014 to help delineate research funding towards oncology in the UK.
Kevin Kasozi
Kevin is a final year BSc Computing student at Bournemouth University. As part of his final year project, (Spring 2017), he is updating the ResIn visualisation that allow the user to produce customised graphics relating to research investment and burden of disease. He is also adding new features such as interactive chloropleth maps and additional selections, to ensure the end-user can generate a wealth of informative graphics tailored to their own requirements.