Alan Lopez First Malaria World Congress 2018

Alan Lopez

Professor Alan Lopez AC is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and the Rowden-White Chair of Global Health and Burden of Disease Measurement at The University of Melbourne. He is also Director of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Group in the MSPGH. He held prior appointments as Professor of Medical Statistics and Population Health and Professor of Global Health, and Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland from 2003-2012. He worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva for 22 years holding a series of technical and senior managerial posts including Chief epidemiologist in WHO’s Tobacco Control Program (1992-95), Manager of WHO’s Program on Substance Abuse (1996-98), Director of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Unit (1999-2001) and Senior Science Advisor to the Director-General (2002). He is the co-author with Christopher Murray of the seminal Global Burden of Disease Study (1996), and subsequent updates, which have greatly influenced global and national debates about priority setting and resource allocation in health. More recently, he has led the global initiative to improve the registration and certification of births, deaths and causes of death to guide global and national investments for health development by UN agencies, bilateral aid agencies, and philanthropy. In 2014 he was awarded the Peter Wills medal by Research Australia for his outstanding contributions to building Australia’s international reputation in health and medical research. In 2015 he was selected as Thompson Reuters Highly Cited (HiCi) Researcher in clinical medicine and ranked among the top 10 most influential scientists in the world. In 2016 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for eminent service to science and to the advancement of planning and policy development to improve public health in developing countries.