A global grassroots movement

Meet our team


Board of Directors

Neale Batra

Executive Director
Co-founder

        

Neale is an epidemiologist who works to improve operational emergency response. He loves teaching, building community, and values public service. Prior to co-founding Applied Epi, he worked in emergency response and preparedness for WHO, Médecins Sans Frontières, and several US local health agencies.

Alex Spina

Vice President
Co-founder

        

Alex co-founded Applied Epi to widen access to robust epidemiological analysis methods and tools. He is an epidemiologist who has consulted for a variety of national and international health emergency response organisations, and is training to be a medical doctor.

Sara Ferraz

  

Sara Ferraz is a field epidemiologist and former President of ProEpi, the Brazilian Association of Field Epidemiologists. She has extensive experience in emergency response and preparedness in South America and lusophone Africa with WHO and TEPHINET.

Aminata Ndiaye

  

Aminata is an Epidemiologist-Biostatistician with extensive experience in field outbreak response. She is from Sénégal, leads Applied Epi R courses, and hopes all French-speaking R users benefit from The Epi R Handbook. Saying "an R User will always be an R Learner" she invites you into an eternal learning process. Dal leen ak jàmm! Welcome on board!

Annick Lenglet

  

Annick Lenglet is an infectious disease field epidemiologist with over 20 years experience in countries across the globe. She is a passionate advocate for open-source teaching, training and tools to improve data analytics and field epidemiology on the frontline for rapid and evidence-based decision making. She is currently an Antimicrobial Resistance Advisor at the newly established International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions (ICARS).

Marie-Amelie Degail Chabrat

  

Marie-Amelie Degail Chabrat is a senior epidemiologist with the WHO Health Emergencies programme where she supports field epidemiologists and co-leads the Integrated Outbreak Analytics (IOA) project. An EPIET alum (2011, UK), she worked previously with Médecins du Monde, Aide Médicale Internationale, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Epicentre in Europe, US, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Haiti and Guinea.

Elburg van Boetzelaer

Secretary

Elburg van Boetzelaer is a public health practitioner who has a decade of experience with different (i)NGOs and UN agencies in low and middle income countries. In her role as secretary of the board she is excited to contribute to increasing the accessibility of high-quality applied epidemiology training materials all around the world.

Isha Berry

Treasurer

        

Isha is an epidemiologist with the US CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). Her doctoral research at the University of Toronto focused on global infectious disease transmission dynamics, particularly between humans and animals. Isha is passionate about open science and science communication.


Team

Berhe Etsay

Training Coordinator

Berhe is an epidemiologist with 10 years experience as a clinician, lecturer, and public health expert - including four years in emergency response with Medecines sans frontieres in Ethiopia and South Sudan. He coordinates the R training program. He estimates that R has saved 90% of the time he used to spend on data analysis, and is proud to help others experience the same.

Olivia Boyd

Support Coordinator

Olivia coordinates the R Support Desk, is an R instructor on French and English courses, and coordinates language translations. She is undertaking her PhD at Imperial College London in infectious disease modelling, in which she develops novel phylodynamic methods to monitor disease transmission in the context of emerging and pandemic outbreaks.

Paula Blomquist

     

Paula is a principal epidemiologist in the UK Health Security Agency, with prior experience in WHO and deploying to epidemic responses with the UK Emergency Medical Team. Her focus is infectious disease surveillance and rapid analyses, using R for automation and visualizations. She is an R instructor and supports the Help Desk project.

Leonel Lerebours Nadal

Leonel, MD, is a field epidemiologist (FETP) in the Dominican Republic who has worked in the NGO and public section on HIV/TB since 2007. He has been an instructor for the DR FETP program in EpiInfo and QGIS, and in 2020 fell in love with data science because of R.

Janice Okeke

Janice is a public health advocate and champion of quality education for all children. She has worked as a CDC Applied Epidemiology Fellow, evaluation specialist, and data analyst at US local and state health departments, and also has experience teaching physical education to students from various backgrounds in US cities.

Pat Keating

        

Patrick is an epidemiologist and has worked as an Epidemiology Advisor for MSF Operational Centre Amsterdam since 2019. He has supported outbreak response and surveillance activities in the DRC, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan. He started learning R in 2015 and is happy to support further uptake of R by epidemiologists worldwide.

Christopher Maronga

Christopher is a biostatistician and R programmer currently at the Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Oxford University. He has broad experience managing and analysing healthcare data for decision-making, as well as teaching introductory and advanced training courses.

Mara Kont

     

Mara is an R instructor for French and English courses and supports the R Help Desk. She is a PhD student in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London.

Luong Nguyen

        

Luong Nguyen is an R instructor and also leads the Vietnamese translation team. In his doctoral studies at Uppsala University, Sweden, he focuses on infectious and zoonotic diseases, risk analysis, and spatial epidemiology within integrative approaches such as One Health and Ecohealth

Castory Munishi

Castory Munishi loves to teach R, which he uses almost every day to generate insights to address healthcare challenges. He has served as data lead in several multi-disciplinary public health teams.

Mumbua Mutunga

Mumbua Mutunga is an R instructor and medical statistician who has worked with KEMRI and CEMA in Kenya, with particular expertise in rabies surveillance and elimination programs. She is passionate about supporting people to leverage R and other statistical tools to do meaningful work in disease prevention and control.

Finlay Campbell

        

Finlay Campbell is an R developer and outbreak analytics consultant at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme in Geneva. He is the lead author of the epicontacts R package, among others.

Lucca Nielsen

     

Lucca is a public health data analyst who has worked several years in state-level epidemiological surveillance in São Paulo, Brazil. His primary focus is respiratory infectious diseases and automated technical reports. He aims to provide valuable data-driven insights and support disease control and decision-making processes in public health.

Amy Mikhail

     

Amy is a field epidemiologist and public health microbiologist (EPIET/EUPHEM alum), with over 15 years of experience in infectious disease programs at regional, national and international levels. Since 2015, she has enjoyed engaging with and supporting new R users, through teaching, mentoring and the development of R learning materials. Currently based in the UK, Amy now works internationally as a freelance consultant.

Abel Khisa

     

Abel Khisa is a humanitarian and health data scientist whose work experience spans Somalia, Kenya, CAR, Mali, and Nigeria for a range of humanitarian issues including non-communicable diseases, malnutrition, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Abel is passionate about inclusive data technologies and approaches within medical humanitarian work and research. He uses R for web scraping and data analysis for near real-time public health reporting.

Temuulen Enebish

        

Temuulen is an epidemiologist with expertise ranging from outbreak investigation and infectious disease surveillance to air pollution research and reproductive epidemiology. Based in Mongolia, he has consulted for WHO and the national health agency, including support for the Field Epi Training Program (FETP). He got hooked on R during his doctoral studies at USC, teaches R for Applied Epi, and leads the Mongolian translation team.

Shazia Ruybal-Pesántez

        

Shazia is an infectious disease genomic epidemiologist based at Imperial College London. Her R expertise spans data management, population genetics, mathematical modelling, automated reporting, and R Shiny app development. Her commitment to the R community extends beyond her research, and prior to joining Applied Epi as an instructor (English and Spanish) she was president and co-organizer of R-Ladies Melbourne Inc. She is passionate about open science, capacity building in R, and the development of advanced digital tools to enhance pathogen surveillance.

Kennedy Mwai

        

Kennedy Mwai has expertise in analysis of spatial, epidemiological, and high-throughput health data, having worked on projects throughout Kenya. His research focuses on malaria, he has supported health emergency response in Syria, and he enjoys teaching R and reproducible analysis techniques to diverse audiences.

Kelly McCain

     

Kelly is an epidemiologist with broad experience using R for spatial epidemiology, field trial data management, and mathematical modelling. She is a current PhD student at Imperial College London modelling the public health impact of malaria vaccines and an R instructor for both French and English courses.

Vivek Jason Jayaraj

     

Jason is an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health Malaysia with a keen interest in infectious diseases, informatics, and public health. His passion lies in the spatiotemporal modelling of diseases and developing data-driven solutions. An avid R trainer, Jason staunchly believes in leveraging R at grassroots levels to revolutionise health outcomes.

Alberto Mateo Urdiales

     

Alberto is a medical doctor specialised in public health and field epidemiology, currently at the National Institute of Public Health in Italy, also teaching field epidemiology and medical statistics. Having learned R seven years ago, he appreciates how it allows more effective and efficient work to tackle emergencies, and believes that helping other to become proficient will be an asset to all global public health.

Mathilde Mousset

Mathilde is an R programmer and instructor with expertise supporting the data management needs of health emergency response in many contexts.

Bryan Tegomoh

        

Bryan is a Cameroonian-born physician and medical epidemiologist who supports several national and subnational health agencies, particularly with genomics-informed outbreak investigations. He is passionate about pathogen genomics in public health and how findings can be directly translated into policies that impact the lives of vulnerable populations.

Deepak Varughese

  

Deepak is a primary care doctor and epidemiologist. He has experience working in resource-limited settings in rural and tribal India. He believes data and informatics are powerful tools to be used responsibly keeping in mind that the larger goal remains problem-solving. He thinks R is a great way to deal with the dirty datasets of the real world.

Michael Samuel

     

Michael Samuel is a California public health epidemiologist/biostatistician who has used R extensively for infectious disease investigations and surveillance, burden of disease assessment, and modeling. He has a special interest in visual display of data and has conducted epi software trainings on five continents.

Henry Laurenson-Schafer

Henry is a data analyst and R Shiny expert in the COVID-19 analytics team of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. He is an author of the Epi R Handbook and supports Applied Epi Trainings.

Luis Hernando Aguilar Ramirez

        

Luis works on knowledge and digital information management in humanitarian response with the UN (WHO, UNOCHA, UNWOMEN, UNMEER) and other organizations in countries including Honduras, Mozambique, Colombia, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Syria, and Bangladesh. He is involved in digital innovation initiatives for humanitarian response, crowdsourcing, and citizen participation in disaster risk management.

Arran Hamlet

Arran is a state-level epidemiologist with the US CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). He has expertise in mathematical modelling having worked for Imperial College London, and has supported outbreak response for WHO and several national ministries of health. Enthusiastic about teaching, he has designed and delivered R workshops for diverse audiences.

McEwen Khundi

McEwen is a spatial epidemiologist whose expertise in R spans TB & HIV prevalence surveys, cohort studies, cluster randomised trials, and Bayesian approaches. He loves teaching R to new learners across medicine and the social sciences, is an RStudio certified tidyverse instructor, and is an RStudio tidyverse certified instructor. Based in Malawi, he is finishing a PhD in medical statistics at LSHTM.

Frank Kagoro

  

Frank is a Tanzanian research physician and epidemiologist, and leads the Swahili translation team. He is based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, researching tools for surveillance of antimalarial drug resistance in South-East Asia and Southern Africa. He is affiliated with the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) and Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Thailand

Juan Carlos F Merino

Juan MD, PhD is a specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, and leads the Spanish translation team. He worked in epidemiological surveillance in the regional government of Andalusia, Spain and has taught EpiInfo, EpiMap and outbreak investigations in many courses in Andalusia, the Spanish National Public Health School, the Spanish EIS, etc.

Tim Lee

  

Tim is a postdoctoral research fellow in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has been involved with Applied Epi since its inception, supports R training in several languages, and is excited to continue helping increase access to R around the world.

Hitomi Kariya

  

Hitomi is an epidemiologist focusing on social determinants of health and community-based interventions. She holds a BA in Social Sciences from Waseda University and MPH in Health Services from the University of Washington. In her spare time, Hitomi leads the Japanese translation team and enjoys jogging, hiking, and traveling.

Isaac Florence

Isaac is Principal Epidemiology Data Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, working across epidemiology analytics, data engineering and software engineering. This work focuses on automation, big data, and use of High-Performance Computing infrastructure (mostly in R).

Abdullah Ömer Şeker

        

Omer, MD, MPH is the lead of the Turkish translation. He is an epidemiologist, with experience in medico-marketing, bioinformatics and clinical trials. Currently working as Real-World Evidence manager for IQVIA. He is focused on personalized medicine and big data analytics.

Calder Fong

Calder is the team's resident artist.

Advisors

Amrish Baidjoe

  

Amrish Baidjoe is a field epidemiologist and microbiologist (EPIET/EUPHEM) who is currently the Director of the Operational Research Centre LuxOR for Médecins Sans Frontières (OCB).

Nancy Hall

Nancy has over three decades experience working in nonprofit management, teaches nonprofit finance and management at the Johns Hopkins University, and has advised many local, national, and international nonprofits.

Israel Touitou

Israel is Applied Epi's advisor on educational pedagogy and best practices for teaching data science.

Nicky Spina

Nicky advises Applied Epi on technical and web content.

All other contributors

Epi R Handbook authors

Neale Batra, Alex Spina, Paula Blomquist, Finlay Campbell, Henry Laurenson-Schafer, Isaac Florence, Natalie Fischer, Aminata Ndiaye, Liza Coyer, Jonathan Polonsky, Yurie Izawa, Chris Bailey, Daniel Molling, Isha Berry, Emma Buajitti, Mathilde Mousset, Sara Hollis, Wen Lin

Epi R Handbook reviewers

Pat Keating, Amrish Baidjoe, Annick Lenglet, Margot Charette, Danielly Xavier, Marie-Amélie Degail Chabrat, Esther Kukielka, Michelle Sloan, Aybüke Koyuncu, Rachel Burke, Kate Kelsey, Berhe Etsay, John Rossow, Mackenzie Zendt, James Wright, Laura Haskins, Flavio Finger, Tim Taylor, Jae Hyoung Tim Lee, Brianna Bradley, Wayne Enanoria, Manual Albela Miranda, Molly Mantus, Pattama Ulrich, Joseph Timothy, Adam Vaughan, Olivia Varsaneux, Lionel Monteiro, Joao Muianga

Epi R Handbook translators

Vietnamese

Nguyễn Thanh Lương, Nguyễn Thị Khánh Huyền, Hồ Hoàng Dung, Nguyễn Trung Thành, Vũ Thu Hà, Võ Hữu Thuận

Japanese

Hitomi Kariya 苅谷 瞳, Norimitsu Nishida 西田 典充, Yusuke Saito 齋藤 雄介, Yoshihiko Baba 馬場 美彦, Miyu Fuzawa 麸沢 美裕, Yura Ko 髙 勇羅, Ryosuke Fujii 藤井 亮輔, Atsushi Fushimi 伏見 淳, Yuta Asano 浅野 裕太, Yuna Koyama 小山 佑奈, Reiko Yamaura 山浦 礼子, Takuaki Tani 谷 拓朗, Seito Nakamura 中村 星斗, Tomoki Nishikawa 西川 寛来, Shuntaro Sato 佐藤 俊太朗, Kengo Nagashima 長島 健悟, Taishi Kayano 茅野 大志, Yurika Kawazoe 川添 百合香, Yuki Hira 平 友樹, Yuri Nakane 中根 優里, Yukihiro Yamaguchi 山口 征啓, Kotomi Sakai 堺 琴美, Yuya Ishihara 石原 裕也

Chinese

Lin Yu, Shuai Ren, Guangming Li, Kangguo Li, Zhendong Tong, Wen Lin

French

NDIAYE Aminata, Bryan Tegomoh, Anais Legrand, Marie-Amelie Degail-Chabrat, Yves Amevoin, Laura Downham, Lise Grout, Margot Charette, Mathilde Mousset, Noe Guincko, Mor Ndiaye, Elysee Nerisson Joseph

Spanish

Juan Carlos Fernández Merino, Ximena Tolosa, Ignacio Castro, Juan Monteagudo, Luis Hernando Aguilar

Portuguese

Carolina Musso, César Augusto Galvão, Halian Vilela, Felipe Cardoso, João Pedro Angelici, Laís Relvas, Rafaela Tadei, Hudson Gabriel Virtuoso Fontenelle, Pauliana Galvão, Nathalia Zini , Paula Maiçara, Eucilene Santana, Ademar Barbosa Dantas Junior

Mongolian

Temuulen Enebish, Bolor Bold

Swahili

Frank Kagoro, Natasha Said, Barbara Citarella, Wycliffe Odongo, Nguku Patrick, Neema Mosha, Kennedy Mwai, Kadondi Kasera, Doris Nyamwaya, Castory Munishi, James Otieno, Jeff Nyakeriga, Wilhellmuss Mauka

Turkish

Abdullah Ömer Şeker, Can Ilgın, Çağrı Emin Şahin, Gülşen Barlas, Ömer Özer, Yasemin Denizli

Burmese (Myanmar)

Soe Yu Naing, The The Zuu Zin, Thet Htar Thuzar, Thaint Thaint Thwe, Htet Arkar

Other Applied Epi contributors

Web/server experts

Nicky Spina, Mark Schulte

R4Epis project

Alice Carr, David Jorgensen, Amy Gimma, Mara Kont, Brianna Bradley, Zhian Kamvar