Dennis Mazingi is a medical doctor and general surgeon with a special interest in paediatric injury prevention, global surgery, and surgically correctable NCDs. He has worked in clinical medicine and surgery in southern Africa for almost a decade and is currently pursuing a DPhil in the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences in the global surgery group.

His work focuses on trauma surveillance and quality improvement in paediatric trauma care in Zimbabwe. He is ably supervised by Professor Kokila Lakhoo and Professor Ashok Handa at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and Professor Godfrey Muguti at the University of Zimbabwe.

Prior to joining The George Institute Dennis obtained his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Malawi, College of Medicine and an MMed (Master’s in Medicine) in General Surgery at the University of Zimbabwe, College of Health Sciences. He holds a first-class degree in International Health and Tropical Medicine (IHTM) from the University of Oxford and is a fellow of the College of Surgeons of South Africa as well as a Beit Trust Scholar.

He has worked in various research collaboratives in the field of global surgery, paediatric surgery, and general surgery. Dennis’s other interests lie in clinical surgery, surgical education, disruptive health technologies, frugal innovations, health systems and implementation research.

Dennis wants to see a healthier, more prosperous, more equitable world through surgical care and research. His mission is to help accelerate progress towards SDG target 3.6: to halve the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2030 in Zimbabwe and globally; and to scale up quality surgical and anaesthesia care to the 5 billion people who need it through 2030 and beyond.

Prasanthi is an injury epidemiologist focusing on monitoring and evaluation of child road safety projects in 6 countries through the Botnar Foundation and working with longitudinal data to analyse gender differences and injuries amongst a large cohort of adolescents from Vietnam, Peru, Ethiopia and India.

Prasanthi obtained her medical degree from Cambridge University (UK), and then spent over a decade working within the field of injury prevention at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, US). With a young family and move back to the UK, she wanted to be part of a dynamic and innovative team slightly closer to home and was therefore thrilled to have the opportunity to join the George Institute, UK, helping to further develop the injury research portfolio.

Professor Simone Pettigrew is the Head of Food Policy. She has qualifications in Economics, Marketing, and Consumer Psychology. Her broad areas of expertise include behavioural psychology, health promotion, health policy, communications, social marketing, and intervention research.

Along with nutrition, her substantive areas of research include obesity, physical activity, alcohol consumption, smoking, active transport, and healthy ageing. Simone sits on numerous advisory committees and regularly performs research consultancies for NGO and government entities. To date, she has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and produced more than 160 technical reports for NGOs and government departments.

See Professor Pettigrew's full CV here.

Chhavi Bhandari is Co-Director, Impact & Engagement at The George Institute for Global Health, where she leads a global programme of advocacy and stakeholder engagement to maximise the impact of our health and medical research. Her work focuses on multilateral partnerships and advancing community engagement and involvement.  She also serves as Community Engagement and Involvement Lead for the NIHR Global Health Research Centre on NCDs and Environmental Change, co-chairs the WHO NCD Lab on Women and Girls, and contributes to global health policy through WHO civil society groups. With an MBA and international healthcare experience across India, the UK, Australia, and beyond, Chhavi brings a globally informed yet locally grounded approach to advancing equitable health systems.