About the Epidemiology Group Committee

Barbara Rath MD PhD

Chair

Barbara A. Rath, MD PhD is a board-certified pediatric consultant and infectious disease specialist with 20 years’ experience in clinical trials, public health and virology in the US, Latin America and Europe. Dr. Rath is Research director at Marie et Louis Pasteur University in France and served as honorary professor at the University of Nottingham School of Medicine, UK until 2019.

Dr. Rath received her medical school education in Germany, the United States and Spain, and her doctoral degrees from the University of Basel, Switzerland and Marie et Louis Pasteur University, France. In addition to a post-doctoral fellowship at the Stanford Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases & Geographic Medicine, she has received pediatric residency and infectious disease subspecialty training at Duke and Tulane Universities, USA. Recent research focuses on defining a precision medicine approach to managing pediatric patients with acute viral infections. In collaboration with the Robert Koch Institute, she developed innovative real-time surveillance programs for the monitoring of influenza-like illness and the immuno-safety of vaccines and antivirals in infants and children.

Dr. Rath is co-founder and chair of the Vaccine Safety Initiative, an international think tank and non-profit-organization focused on new avenues for the treatment, communication and prevention of infectious diseases. Her team developed and validated clinical and virologic endpoints for clinical trials and observational settings. The goal is to individualize the management of influenza and other respiratory viral infections though integration of infectious disease epidemiology with data standardization, mobile health, biomarker research and advanced diagnostic capabilities.

The Vaccine Safety Initiative, nominated for the EU Health Award in 2017, collaborates with patient organizations and innovators to develop multilingual chatbots, mobile apps and training programs such as SEKI. VIVI coordinates EU-funded projects such as ImmuHubs and MedLit, and contributes to RIVER-EU, Immunion and other international initiatives aiming to improve quality of care, disease prevention and medical literacy in isolated and medically underserved communities.

Balasubramani Goundappa PhD

Vice-chair

Balasubramani Goundappa is a Research Professor of Epidemiology and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His work centers on statistical and epidemiological analysis of data from large, multicenter clinical trials. He develops study designs, guides data management and analysis, and creates efficient methodologies for epidemiological research addressing major public health challenges.

Much of his current work focuses on estimating influenza vaccine effectiveness and evaluating influenza vaccines. He also coordinates a multicenter trial investigating treatments for glaucoma and serves as co investigator for data management and analysis for the CDC’s US Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Network. His collaborations extend across disciplines, including partnerships with Family Medicine investigators that have led to successful grants from Merck, Sanofi, and AstraZeneca. These projects support research on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza vaccine effectiveness, and human metapneumovirus (hMPV).

Through the US Flu VE Network, his findings have contributed to global influenza vaccine policy. Since joining the Epidemiology Data Center (EDC) in 2001, he has participated in numerous collaborative studies that have strengthened the impact of this work on public health. Over the past two decades, these efforts have resulted in 163 peer reviewed publications, reflecting his commitment to advancing epidemiological science.

Looking ahead, he aims to address emerging challenges in vaccine effectiveness, including waning immunity, the impact of mRNA vaccines, and the influence of viral evolution. He also plans to investigate treatment modalities in the COAST study related to Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT). A central part of his mission is mentoring the next generation of scientists by equipping them with advanced statistical skills, strong data interpretation abilities, and effective communication strategies to prepare them for leadership roles.

More detail can be read here.

Jianyu Lai

Jianyu Lai, PhD, MPH, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. She received her training in epidemiology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dr Lai’s research focuses on the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and other respiratory pathogens. She has contributed to and led studies examining exhaled breath viral shedding, transmission pathways, and prevention strategies. Using observational and experimental designs alongside analytical approaches, she studies how respiratory viruses spread in both community and controlled settings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her work helped show that emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants had greater capacity for aerosol shedding and that different types of face coverings differed in their efficacy as source control. Her research aims to generate evidence to inform public health interventions for respiratory virus control and improve preparedness for future pandemics.

Daniel Pan

Daniel Pan is an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Leicester and a Resident Physician (Specialist Registrar) in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. He trained in Medicine at Imperial College London and completed his Academic Foundation Programme and Core Medical Training in Yorkshire and London before joining Leicester in 2019 as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow and Specialist Registrar.

Dan is strongly interested in tackling important public health issues relating to respiratory viral infections, using novel, innovative and intersectional approaches. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dan contributed to research that first identified the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority groups and isolated exhaled SARS-CoV-2, directly linking it to human-to-human transmission. Dan has led in the design and implementation major field studies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission – including BE-DIRECT and COVMASK. COVMASK forms an essential part of his NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, in which he enrolled over 600 participants since 2020 and expanded to include healthcare workers and hospitalised patients with influenza, RSV, measles and mpox. Dan regularly collaborates with colleagues at the Oxford Big Data Institute, Imperial College London and the Hong Kong School of Public Health.

Dan has led international guideline development with the World Health Organisation on the ethnic disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. His work is cited in more than 100 policy documents worldwide. His research has directly informed government policy through contributions to two national core studies on COVID-19 (themes of transmission/environment and immunity) supported by the UK Government Office for Science and has played a role in shaping debates in the UK House of Commons.

Tatiana Portella

Tatiana Portella is a disease ecologist with a PhD in Ecology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has been working with statistical modeling of infectious diseases applied to the surveillance of influenza, COVID-19, and other respiratory viruses. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Program of Scientific Computation at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. She is a member of the Technical and Scientific Committee of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, where she assesses the epidemiological scenario of Severe Acute Respiratory Infections across the country. She has also worked as a technical consultant for the São Paulo State Health Department (Brazil) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).

Nicolas De Prost

Nicolas de Prost, MD, PhD, has devoted his career to intensive care medicine. After completing a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA, he graduated from Paris 7 University and completed a clinical fellowship in the medical intensive care unit at Henri Mondor Hospital in the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris group.

Dr de Prost’s research focuses on various areas of pulmonary critical care medicine, including ventilator-induced lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome, experimental models of acute lung injury, and pulmonary infections. He has developed a particular interest in severe viral infections, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and SARS-CoV-2. He is the lead investigator of several epidemiological and translational studies on severe respiratory viral infections. His recent research projects have led to successful grants from the ANRS-MIE, the French Ministry of Health and from Moderna. Dr de Prost is currently a professor of intensive care medicine at Henri Mondor Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris in Créteil, France.