BIOBANK - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Researcher in Genetic Epidemiology
Ahmed completed his undergraduate degree in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Alexandria University and his MSc in Clinical Pharmacy at the Queen's University Belfast. He obtained a European Respiratory Society long term research fellowship, and graduated from Ghent University with a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences. He joined Oxford Population Health in 2022.
Ahmed focuses on the genetic epidemiology of common complex-trait diseases. He aims to leverage large clinical and genetic datasets to understand complex diseases, to inform precision medicine approaches to prevention and treatment. Ahmed's research involves several techniques in genetic epidemiology including genome-wide, phenome-wide and multi-omics studies.
He works as a researcher in genetic epidemiology in the China Kadoorie Biobank Group, on a variety of projects including multi-trait genome-wide association studies.
Alex joined the Clinical Trials Service Unit (CTSU) as part of the China Kadoorie Biobank research group in October 2023 as a DPhil student in Population Health. Prior to this, Alex completed the MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford in 2023, and a BSc in Biomedical Sciences with Industrial Experience at the University of Reading in 2022. During his undergraduate, he spent a year working on various phase 4 vaccine trials across Europe and the United States as part of the Medical Development Scientific/Clinical Affairs (MDSCA) department at Pfizer.
His current research uses proteomic analysis to elucidate causal mechanisms of long-term cardiovascular disease health risks associated with adiposity in diverse populations, using both the China Kadoorie and UK biobanks. Alex is supervised by Dr Fiona Bragg, Dr Andri Iona, and Professor Zhengming Chen. In his spare time, Alex enjoys reading about 19th-century European history and following sports such as football, rugby, and powerlifting.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant in Genetic Epidemiology
Alfred completed his undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology at Heriot-Watt University and MSc in Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated from Cardiff University with a PhD in genetic epidemiology. He joined NDPH in 2019.
Andri Iona is a medical statistician working on the China Kadoorie Biobank. Her research interest s focus on the observational and genetic associations of adiposity with cardiovascular diseases. She implements statistical analyses for publications and contributes to the development of statistical resources. She also contributes to the MSc in Global Health Science and Epide miology programme at the University of Oxford as a lecturer and statistics tutor.
She obtained a Bachelor's degree in Statistics and Actuarial - Financial Mathematics from the University of Aegean (in Greece), an MSc in Medical Statistics from University of Leicester and a DPhil in Population Health from the University of Oxford. Her DPhil investigated the association of adiposity and major plasma biomarkers with the risk of cardiovascular diseases and mortality in Chinese adults. Prior to commencing her DPhil, Andri worked as a medical statistician in the China Kadoorie Biobank looking at the relationships between smoking and cause-specific mortality, diabetes and cause-specific mortality, adiposity and diabetes incidence, and adiposity and stroke.
Bowen joined the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU) and Wolfson College as a DPhil student in 2021. His research project aims to investigate the causal associations and genetic links between type II diabetes and blood glucose with different types of cancer across populations. His research is supervised by Professor Gillian Reeves and Professor Zhengming Chen, and is supported by a Cancer Research UK scholarship.
Prior to Oxford Population Health, Bowen worked as a research assistant at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care (Dr Stephen Burgess Unit), Cambridge, after completing his MPhil Epidemiology degree at Cambridge. There, he gained extensive training in genetic epidemiology and Mendelian randomisation (MR). His research was focused on assessing and disentangling the causal relationships of cardiovascular risk factors using genetic variants and both linear and non-linear MR methods. In 2018, Bowen completed his Bachelor of Science degree (with distinction) in pharmacology at University of Alberta, Canada, where his understanding of pathophysiology and practical skills in biomedical research were developed. He was also trained in pharmacokinetics characterisation and drug development during his undergraduate research.
Bowen's research interests lie in using epidemiological and genetic approaches to assess the correlations and causal links between risk factors and chronic diseases. He also holds a strong interest in integrating -omics data for the identification of biological pathways and potential drug targets. He aims to improve the understanding of disease aetiology and pathophysiology and contribute to disease prevention and drug development through his research.
Job Titles:
- IT and Biological Sample Bank Manager
Charles joined the China Kadoorie Biobank research unit as a DPhil student in October 2023. Under the supervision of Professors Huaidong Du, Iona Millwood, and Derrick Bennett, his research examines risk factors and potential therapeutic targets for glaucoma and other eye diseases using biological and epidemiological data from prospective biobank studies.
Charles earned a BA (Hons) in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. There, he had the opportunity to contribute to an international research collaboration on optimizing infectious disease surveillance networks that was led by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), where he was hosted for three summers as a visiting researcher in Chengdu, Sichuan. Afterwards, Charles joined the data science and analytics team of the American Academy of Ophthalmology to conduct observational studies on key topics in ophthalmology and eye care using a multimillion-patient national ocular disease registry.
Clara is a DPhil student at the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU). Her research focuses on the epidemiology of neurodegenerative disorders in diverse populations. She aims to investigate mechanisms that link potentially modifiable risk factors-in particular, midlife adiposity-to later-life disease and to explore novel biomarkers that can be used as indicators of neurodegeneration. Clara is supervised by Dr Fiona Bragg, Dr Andri Iona, and Professor Zhengming Chen and her research is funded by a Nuffield Department of Population Health Scholarship.
Prior to Oxford, Clara worked at the Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography of the Spanish National Research Council (IEGD-CSIC) conducting research on demographic dynamics and health of ageing populations, and on the delayed adult effects of adverse conditions experienced in early life. Clara has an MSc in Health Science Methodology (UNED, Spain), a postgraduate diploma in Population Health (UIMP, Spain) and a BA Hons in Business and Economics (Open University, UK).
Dani joined the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) and Lincoln College in October 201 9 as a DPhil student in Population Health. Her DPhil will investigate the cardiovascular determinants of frailty in the Chinese population using data from the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB). She will validate a widely used frailty measure in CKB and explore the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and frailty in older people. Dani's work is funded by the department's MRC Population Health Research Unit scholarship and supervised by Dr Sofia Massa, Associate Professor Derrick Bennett, and Professor Robert Clarke.
Prior to joining the department, Dani completed her MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and worked as a research assistant at Imperial College London (Dr Foster Unit) where she analysed health service utilisation by heart failure patients through electronic health records.
Job Titles:
- Data Analyst
- Data Analyst With the China Kadoorie Biobank at the Clinical Trial Service Unit
Daniel Avery is a Data Analyst with the China Kadoorie Biobank at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), University of Oxford. He graduated with an MSc in Research Methods from the University of Bristol before working for a number of companies in the retail sector performing data management roles. He is responsible for helping develop and manage the CKB database, ensuring the research team and collaborators have access to reliable and high quality data.
His primary duties include:
Developing and maintaining several of the tools used for automatic generation of dataset s, as well as tools used for building and testing new data releases.
Acting as a knowledge bank for in-house researchers, about how data was gathered and managed, as well as known pitfalls or challenges associated with each data source.
Importing, cleaning and standardising information from sources as diverse as Health Insurance agencies, meteorological stations, urinalysis devices and genetic assays.
Generally trying to make the lives of CKB researchers easier.
Derrick has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Statistics, an MSc in Medical Statistics, and a PhD in Epidemiology and Statistics. He has been a Royal Statistical Society accredited Chartered Statistician since 2005.
His research is interdisciplinary, integrative and collaborative and uses large-scale observational studies and randomised trials to generate reliable evidence for the prevention of premature deaths and disability from chronic diseases. His work involves applying statistical, epidemiological, computational, and genetic tools to understand associations of exposures with chronic diseases. His research aims to drive improvements in population health by identifying novel treatment targets and implementing precision strategies for primary and secondary prevention of major disease outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
He co-leads the Statistical Group in the China Kadoorie Biobank and oversees a portfolio of research related to aging, cardiovascular, respiratory, and lifestyle factors. He is responsible for ensuring that the study design methodology is robust, appropriate and deliverable as well as for securing grant income as the statistical lead.
Derrick co-leads the Principles of Data Science module of the MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology, and leads the curriculum development for data science teaching. He is currently supervising several MSc and DPhil students.
He has also contributed chapters to four textbooks and was named as a highly cited researcher in 2018 for papers that rank in the top 1% in his field of research. In 2022 he was listed among the top 1000 scientists in the UK in the Research.com Medicine rankings.
Beth joined CTSU in the Nuffield Department of Population Health in October 2019. Her research in the China Kadoorie Biobank explores chronic hepatitis B infection, including conventional and genetic risk factors associated with infection and burden of disease. This work is supervised by Ling Yang, Iona Millwood and Zhengming Chen. Beth completed the MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology at Oxford prior to commencing this DPhil. She is a junior doctor from Australia, who worked in regional Queensland for 2 years and enjoys running, rowing and playing Australian Football in her spare time at Oxford.
Job Titles:
- ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
- Associate Professor at the Clinical Trial Service Unit
Christiana Kartsonaki is an associate professor at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. She is working on the epidemiology of cancer and other diseases, as well as on related statistical methods. Her interests include investigating the associations of risk factors and biomarkers (such as metabolomics and proteomics) with various cancers, mainly in the China Kadoorie Biobank, risk prediction, the design of case-subcohort and other studies, as well as other topics including cardiometabolic diseases, air pollution, COVID-19, and cystic fibrosis.
She has a degree in Mathematics, an MSc in Applied Statistics and a DPhil in Statistics. She has previously worked as a Biostatistician at the Department of Oncology of the University of Oxford and as a Research Associate at the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge.
Dianjianyi Sun is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Centre. His interest in epidemiology of cardiometabolic diseases led him to pursue a PhD. degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University. He completed his PhD. research investigating the role of DNA methylation in the development of cardiometabolic disorders from 2010 to 2015. He then joined the Tulane University Obesity Research Centre as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Lu Qi. He joined the National Coordination Centre in 2019 and has been involved in the 3rd-resurvey and project-specific coordination and communications. Dr. Sun's current research interests include chronic disease epidemiology, multi-omics of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, as well as ageing and life-course epidemiology.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, Course Director - MSc Global Health Science and Epidemiology
- Director for the
Hubert is the Course Director for the MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology, providing leadership and overseeing the management of the MSc course and the associated PGCert in Statistics and Epidemiology. He is a module lead, lecturer, and tutor for the Principles of Epidemiology module. He also coordinates the short courses in epidemiology and statistics. He sits on several committees within the Medical Sciences Division (including the Skills Training Committee and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group), representing postgraduate taught courses.
Hubert is an epidemiologist at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit. His main research interest is in the use of large-scale population-based prospective cohort studies at different stages of the life course to investigate various areas in population health. He co-leads the environmental health research theme within the China Kadoorie Biobank, where he and colleagues integrate epidemiology, exposure science, genomics and proteomics, and machine learning to conduct multi-disciplinary research in the health impact of long-term environmental exposures, in particular household and ambient air pollution and non-optimal temperature. His research also covers the use of birth cohort studies to examine the effects of environmental and occupational exposures and other risk factors in maternal and perinatal outcomes. Hubert contributes to the support and local capacity building required to conduct epidemiological studies in low-resourced settings.
Hubert completed a BSc in Biochemistry and an MPhil in Medical Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before gaining a PhD in Epidemiology (Birmingham). He came to Oxford in 2015 after 5 years as a lecturer in environmental and occupational epidemiology at the University of Birmingham. In 2020, Hubert was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in recognition of his contribution to the teaching of epidemiology in the occupational medicine community.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
I was awarded a Novo Nordisk Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work with Prof. Zhengming Chen (NDPH Oxford) and Dr. Joanna Howson (Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford) in December 2022. My major research is focusing on triangulating and investigating the molecular phenotype and mechanism of type 2 diabetes (T2D) applying various epidemiological approaches (e.g., genetic epidemiology methods, Mendelian randomisation (MR) analysis, traditional epidemiology methods) across diverse populations (e.g., UK population and Chinese population), which might provide both public health and therapeutic insights on T2D prevention/treatments.
I had my medical training (Preventive Medicine) in Sun Yat-sen University, China (2010 - 2015). I then completed my PhD degree in Epidemiology from The University of Hong Kong under the supervision of Prof. Gabriel Leung, and Dr. C. Mary Schooling (2015 - 2019) examining the associations across birth weight, liver function, and T2D/cardiovascular diseases. Prior to Oxford, I worked as a senior research associate in the MRC/IEU, University of Bristol (2019 - 2022) mentored by Prof. Deborah Lawlor, Prof. Martin Rutter, and Prof. Jack Bowden investigating the effects of sleep disorders (e.g., lack of sleep, insomnia, evening chorotype) on T2D risk with the use of MR methods.
Hannah joined the China Kadoorie Biobank study group in early 2021 to assist with sample management. She provide s support on a number of projects involving the use of the CKB biological samples, working closely with colleagues from Oxford and China as well as external collaborators with aspects of project management, design, and delivery. One of her key focuses is the design and implementation of a large-scale reformatting project that is currently underway to improve the accessibility of CKB plasma samples for prospective future studies. Her other responsibilities include interrogation and analysis of CKB datasets, maintaining and updating sample documentation, and helping to develop new methods and systems for managing the associated data. More recently she has been involved in assisting with the planning and development of the new CKB website.
Hannah holds a BSc in Biology from the University of Bristol. Prior to her current role, she worked for the Animal and Plant Health Agency in the disease surveillance and diagnostics laboratories for Bovine TB and Leptospirosis. In early 2020 she volunteered to take a secondment at the first COVID-19 Lighthouse Laboratory, where she spent the next 4 months working as Section Lead in a high throughput facility providing NHS coronavirus diagnostic PCR testing.
Hanyu joined the Nuffield Department of Population Health, the Big Data Institute, and Kellogg College in October 2022 as a DPhil student in Population Health. His DPhil project aims to utilise genetic data from the China Kadoorie Biobank and the UK Biobank to predict the effects of pharmaceutical interventions for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Hanyu is supervised by Associate Professor Derrick Bennett, Professor Robert Clarke, and Dr Neil Wright.
Prior to joining the department, Hanyu completed his undergraduate studies at Peking University in China and received his MPhil in Epidemiology from the University of Cambridge, where he conducted research on serum biomarkers of cardiovascular disease. He worked as a research associate at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore, where he worked in digital health research. Hanyu also worked with several research groups in China on chronic disease epidemiology and with UNICEF and NGOs to promote global health.
Hanyu is interested in applying methods from genetic epidemiology to predict drug effects, inform prevention strategies, and explore drug repurposing and discovery opportunities.
Iain studied Medicine at University of Cambridge, graduating in 2003. He worked in General Medicine in the NHS and in New Zealand and became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians in 2007. Iain then completed training in General Practice in 2009 and worked in a busy practice in Swindon for several years.
He joined NDPH in 2015 and works as a Clinical Research Fellow with in the China Kadoorie Biob ank (CKB). The focus of Iain's research centres around the development of techni ques for standardising Chinese health insurance data and procedures for disease classification and adjudication, particularly for stroke and ischaemic heart disease.
He continues to work part-time in General Practice.
Iona Millwood completed an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a DPhil in Molecular Genetics at the University of Oxford. She worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Imperial College London, on large-scale genetic epidemiological projects including the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts, and also spent several years as a Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia, developing and conducting clinical trials for biomedical methods of HIV prevention in Australia and South-East Asia.
Iona joined the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) in 2009, to work on the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB), including designing and conducting genomic and multi-omic assays to enhance and develop the CKB resources. Current research interests focus on using genetic and molecular epidemiology to understand the aetiology of cardio-metabolic and other chronic diseases, using genetic approaches to identify and evaluate potential drug targets, and investigating the role of infection in cancer risk, and the health effects of alcohol consumption. Iona co-leads a Genetic Epidemiology module for the MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology.
Jonathan Clarke was appointed as a medical statistician for the China Kadoorie Biobank Study within the Nuffield Department of Population Health in March 2021. He has a strong interest in diet and fitness and how lifestyle choices and experiences are associated with life expectancy and quality of life.
Previously, he worked in the data science team at IQVIA real world solutions on several studies including a retrospective cohort study on major depressive disorder using data from UK Biobank and a prospective study on the effectiveness of new licenced precision treatments for cystic fibrosis.
Jonathan completed an MSc in Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2020. Before taking this qualification he had a successful career in education as a mathematics teacher and school leader, having graduated with a BSc (Ed) in mathematics from the University of Exeter.
Liu Chao graduated from North China Electric Power University. After graduation, he engaged in computer management, dealing with network failures, IT equipment software and hardware failures. He joined the China Kadoorie Biobank in 2017 and is mainly responsible for the information management of the National Coordinating Centre and the Regional Centres, as well as the management of biological sample banks.
Job Titles:
- Oxford British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence Intermediate
Job Titles:
- Professor of Epidemiology
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine