Dr Abrar Chughtai

Lecturer, School of Public Health & Community Medicine

Dr Abrar is a Lecturer in International Health in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales. He is co-director of Master of Infectious Diseases Intelligence program in the School. He has a medical degree and a PhD in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. He has more than 15 years’ experience in the health sector with governmental, non-governmental and international health organisations. Dr Abrar has substantial experience of public health programs, having worked in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Tuberculosis Control Programs for many years. He had been involved in humanitarian work in the past during health emergencies and natural disasters. His research interests include infectious diseases epidemiology and control, vaccine preventable diseases and surveillance. His most important research contributions have been to examine the role of personal protective equipment and other infection control practices in resource limited settings. He has over 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals during last 5 years.

Dr David Muscatello

Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health & Community Medicine

Dr David Muscatello is a Senior Lecturer at the School. He has a PhD in the epidemiology of influenza. He also has many years experience in government as an epidemiologist specialising in acute disease surveillance using administrative databases, public health intelligence and biostatistics including time series analysis. He played a major surveillance role in the New South Wales government response to pandemic influenza in 2009 and has served on the Australian National Influenza Surveillance Committee. David is also a graduate of the New South Wales Public Health Officer Training Program and has supervised and trained numerous Public Health Officer and Biostatistical trainees.

Professor Raina MacIntyre

Professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology

Professor Raina MacIntyre is NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Professor of Global Biosecurity and PLuS Alliance Fellow. She heads the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute. She is best known for research in the transmission dynamics and prevention of infectious diseases, particularly respiratory pathogens such as influenza. She has led the largest body of research internationally on face masks and respirators in health care workers. She has done research on using risk-analysis methods for bioterrorism, and for analysing emerging infectious diseases outbreaks such as MERS-CoV. She is a leader in adult vaccination with a focus on the elderly. She also has an interest in the ethics of medicine, and specifically in dual-use research of concern. She leads a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence immunisation for high risk populations and won the 2014 PHAA National Immunisation Award. Prof MacIntyre has over 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her research is underpinned by extensive field outbreak investigation experience. Her in-depth understanding of the science of outbreak investigation draws from this experience combined with her academic training through a Masters and PhD in Epidemiology. Her passion for field epidemiology led her to co-found the ARM network for Australian outbreak response.