Dr Xia Wang is a Doctoral Research Fellow at The George Institute who specialises in analyses of large-scale randomised controlled trials and conducting epidemiological study. She has a Master of Medicine in Epidemiology and Statistics from the Peking Union Medical college.

Prior to joining The George Institute, Xia worked at Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention where she was involved in national HIV drug resistance surveillance and national epidemiological studies.

Dr Xiaoying Chen is a Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and a Senior Research Fellow in the Global Brain Health Program at the George Institute for Global Health. She leads the stroke and technology themes in the Brain Health Program at the George Institute. She has over 19 years’ experience in international multicenter clinical trials and 15 years in designing and conducting large international clinical trials. She has led and been pivotal to the success of multiple international randomised controlled trials which have had significant impact on guidelines, and decision-making in clinical practice. Her research program focuses on treatment in acute stroke care and stroke recovery by designing and implementing innovative large international clinical trials, developing new tools and measures to support stroke care, especially for remote and underserved population.

Dr Chen is an early career researcher in Clinical trials and stroke. She has vast experience in large scale stroke trials and has been pivotal to the success of multiple world-class large international clinical trials, including as one of the Lead PIs of A multi-faCtorial, mulTi-arm, multi-staGe, randomised, gLOBal Adaptive pLatform trial for stroke (ACT-GLOBAL) aiming to be executed through 300+ hospitals in 20+ countries, Global Project Lead of landmark trial - The third, INTEnsive care bundle with blood pressure Reduction in Acute Cerebral haemorrhage Trial (INTERACT3) with 7000+ stroke patients enrolled from 120+ centres from 10 countries, Senior Project Lead of INTEnsive blood pressure Reduction in hyperacute Cerebral haemorrhage Trial (INTERACT4) with 2200+ stroke patients enrolled from 50+ centres in China, Senior Project Lead of Second Enhanced Control of Hypertension and Thrombectomy Stroke Study (ENCHANTED2) with 800+ stroke patients enrolled from 50+ centres in China, Global Project Lead of other large international clinical trials, including ENCHANTED, INTERACT2 and SAVE.

Xu Zhang graduated from Shenyang University with a Bachelor degree in international accounting. Before joining the George Institute China in October 2014, she had three years working experience as an auditor which helped her quickly adapt to a new environment. 

Yangfeng is the Professorial Fellow of the Peking University Clinical Research Institute and Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Peking University School of Public Health. After receiving his undergraduate and graduate training in medicine, public health and epidemiology, Dr Wu started his career as a Research Fellow in the US-PRC Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular and Cardiopulmonary Epidemiology, where he was sent to the US later on through the NIH Scholar Exchange Program for training in epidemiological research.

His research focuses on prevention and control of cardiovascular disease and he has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers in both Chinese and international journals.  As a cardiovascular expert, Professor Wu has made valuable contributions to reduce the impact of cardiovascular disease in China.  

In 2009, he founded the China International Center for Chronic Disease Prevention in Beijing, a network of 12 Chinese and international research institutions, with the funding awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the UnitedHealth Group. Through the platform, a large project on low-cost, simple interventions for blood pressure control and stroke prevention involving 120 villages from 10 counties in 5 provinces of China is currently running.

Besides his own research, he made great efforts to develop research platforms for high quality clinical research in China. He is the founding Director of The George Institute for Global Health, China, which is hosting the China International Center for Chronic Disease Prevention. He is also one of the founders of Peking University Clinical Research Institute, the first of its kind in China to provide professional technical support to clinical experts in designing, implementing and analyzing clinical studies.

He is also one of the founders of the Chinese Course on Innovative Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences, an international joint program hosted by Peking University Clinical Research Institute, in collaboration with University of Basal and the University of California at San Francisco. With his advices and suggestions, Peking University Clinical Research Program was launched in 2010, as an innovative model, to support financially, technically and also ethically the innovative ideas in clinical research.

As a Member of the Board, he actively participated in the establishment of the Peking University Health Science Center – University of Michigan Health System Joint Institute of Clinical and Translational Research, another new model of collaboration to promote high quality of clinical research in China. Under his leadership, a new graduate course “Expert Seminar Series on Sciences in Clinical Research” has been launched at Peking University Graduate School in September, 2011 to provide the students the most practice-relevant and advanced knowledge in clinical research. After three years of hard efforts, a system for high quality clinical research including resources for funding, technical supporting, scientific and ethical quality management, training, and administration has been established and started functioning.

Yanqing graduated from Hebei Northern College in 2005 with majors in medical information management and information systems. After graduation she worked in various roles including Network and Data Manager, Call Center Manager, IT Engineer and Customer Relationship Manager. Previously she was the project assistnat to the China Rural Health Initiative (CHRI).

Yuan LI joined TGI China in January 2017. As the head of Nutrition and lifestyle program, Yuan’s research focused on nutrition and chronic disease prevention, currently working on projects such as Action on Salt China, EduSaltS,FoodSwitch and SmartDiet.

Yuan received PhD degree of nutrition and food hygiene from the National Institute for Nutrition and Health, China CDC in 2007 and acquired the associate professor qualification identified by the China’s Ministry of Health in 2011. Yuan was offered a conjoint lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales in 2017. Yuan is an accredited Registered Dietitian in China and a committee member of Nutrition and Non-communicable Disease Control Branch at Chinese Nutrition Society.

Dr. Polly Huang holds a Master by Research Degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Sydney. She is currently working as a Senior Data Analyst at the Food Policy Division of the George Institute for Global Health

In the last few years, much of Dr. Huang work has been the development of novel, practical, scalable and low-cost strategies for achieving population dietary sodium reduction. With extended collaboration and involvement in research projects, Dr. Huang’s research is now gradually expanding to reduce cardiovascular risk through improving overall diet quality. At <2 years post PhD, Dr. Huang has 32 high-quality peer-review journal publications, including a few published in the world’s top journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal and Circulation.

Dr. Huang possesses a wholesome set of research skills, including research design, project implementation, funding application and manuscript writing. Her particular strengths include data quality monitoring, complex statistical analyses as well as streamlining and automating research conduct.