Faraidoon is a medical doctor from Kurdistan, Iran, a research fellow in headache disorders at The George Institute for Global Health, and a conjoint lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is interested in studying headache disorders, especially migraine disease, contributing to growing awareness of the need for headache-specific research, and starting a headache-specific research group based on headache patients’ needs. He received his medical degree from the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran and his PhD from the University of New South Wales. Faraidoon is passionate about engaging with scientists, healthcare providers, and people with headache disorders through social media and other communication platforms.

Visit Faraidoon's website.

Prof. Mark Huffman, a Professorial Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health and Adjunct Professor at UNSW, is a globally recognized preventive cardiologist with over a decade of experience in cardiovascular dissemination and implementation research. He is a Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Co-Director of the Global Health Center at Washington University in St. Louis and Adjunct Professor of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University.

He is a Fellow of the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology and was recognised as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine through the National Academy of Medicine. He is a standing member of the NIH Science of Implementation for Health and Health Care study section.

He co-created the World Heart Federation’s flagship Emerging Leaders program, which has trained >200 early-to-mid-career professionals from >50 countries in implementation research. Prof. Huffman has taught graduate-level courses, co-directed the NIH/Fogarty-funded global health fellows’ research training program, and mentored undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, and early-stage investigator trainees in implementation research.

Dr Rajeshree Sanyal works at the George Institute for Global Health as an Assistant Research Manager and Clinical Research Training Program (STOP-Epilepsy CRC) coordinator. She has 4+ years of experience in research management and holds a PhD in Microbiology from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad. She works in design, development, and delivery of institutional research capacity-strengthening programs. She has contributed to several online training programs courses for the institution in collaboration with regional offices. She co-manages the global Research Training learning management system (Moodle) and the institutional PhD program at The George Institute India. Her interests lie in research capacity strengthening, instructional design, digital learning technologies, and IP. 

Before joining the George Institute, Rajeshree was at the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance as a Grants Advisor and Competition secretary. 

Ruth Freed is the Program Manager for two programs, Brain Health & GMRx2 (hypertension polypill) and is responsible for operational leadership including strategic planning, funding management, resourcing and oversight of delivery of several research projects in line with the programs' goals. For the GMRx2 program, Ruth is supporting academic activities related to global commercial development of the GMRx2 product.

Ruth has more than 25 years' clinical trial experience in the hospital, academic and pharmaceutical sectors, joining TGI in 2009 working her way up in project operations roles and most recently held the role of Head of the Academic Project Operations group for over 2 years. Prior to this she worked for Australian company Pharmaxis Ltd on drug registration trials and at GlaxoSmithKline, UK in drug safety. She has spent the last 15 years predominantly working on large scale drug intervention multinational cardiovascular endpoint trials mainly in stroke neurology and is acting as the Global Project Manager for the TRIDENT trial, a secondary prevention stroke randomised controlled trial in 1500 participants in 10 countries.

Mercian Daniel is Senior Research Fellow in, Mental Health Program at George Institute India. He has done his M.Phil. from Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi and his Ph.D. from JNU, New Delhi.

He has over 15 years of research and program implementation working in different capacities at Deptt. of Psychiatry, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi; IIMC, Dept. of Communication Research, New Delhi; Praxis, New Delhi and Save the Children, Calcutta. More recently, he was with PHFI working in reproductive health and urban health governance projects. He has also taught postgraduate students at Delhi School of Social Work, New Delhi and prepared MSW curriculum for St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata.

His research interest lies in evaluating the impact of different forms of anti-stigma campaigns in mental health, first-person accounts of living with mental illness and its contribution to policy narratives, the social determinants and gradient in mental disorders.

Dr Arpita Ghosh works at the George Institute for Global Health India as a Head Biostatistics and Data Science. Arpita received her doctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and post-doctoral training at the National Cancer Institute.

Her work involves quantitative research cutting across multiple areas of public health including childhood vaccination, nutrition, elderly health, and chronic diseases, particularly cancer. Arpita has extensive experience of working with secondary data sets and of conducting epidemiological studies and randomized trials. Her current research interests include causal inference for observational studies, adaptive trial designs for multi-stage studies, and record linkage.

Prior to joining The George Institute, Arpita was at the Public Health Foundation of India as a Research Scientist.

Dr Trieu is a leading expert in global food policy and sodium reduction, currently serving as the Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Population Salt Reduction at The George Institute for Global Health. With a distinguished career in public health, Dr Trieu has advanced nutrition policies and programs aimed at reducing diet-related diseases worldwide, particularly among disadvantaged populations.

Dr Trieu holds a PhD in Medicine from The University of Sydney, Australia and has received several prestigious fellowships, including the NHMRC Early Career Fellowship and the National Heart Foundation of Australia Postdoctoral Fellowship.

As Program Lead - Nutrition Implementation Research at The George Institute, Dr Trieu plays a pivotal role in shaping effective food policies and innovative nutrition programs. Her work focuses on the practical application and implementation of evidence-based nutrition approaches. This includes leading a program of work to change the world’s salt supply from regular to potassium-enriched salt as a strategy to reduce cardiovascular diseases.  As well as developing and adapting Food is Medicine programs for disadvantaged communities in Australia. Her expertise extends internationally, providing guidance and support to many low- and middle-income countries in implementing evidence-based strategies for better health outcomes.

In addition to her research, Dr Trieu serves as a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, The University of New South Wales, where she contributes to the academic development of future public health leaders.

Dr Trieu continues to make significant impact on improving global nutrition and reducing the burden of diet-related diseases through strategic policy and research.

Professor Rodgers has a track record in cardiovascular disease prevention, innovation and public-private partnerships, with an interest in scale-able interventions to address major risks to health. He is currently Acting Director of the Cardiovascular Division at The George Institute, Australia and Chair of Clinical Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College of London.

After graduating in medicine in the United Kingdom he trained in epidemiology and public health in New Zealand. He was the Principal Author of the 2002 World Health Report, the main annual publication for WHO. Professor Rodgers has led developments of an affordable four-in-one cardiovascular combination pill ('polypill'). He led a clinical trial program in economically developed and developing countries, funded by the Wellcome Trust, European Union and others.  

Professor Rodgers also developed a world first cell phone based smoking cessation programme for youth, which disseminated proven health support messages in an age-appropriate, affordable medium.  Over 6,000 patients were involved in clinical trials that demonstrated a 50% increase in quit rates. The service has been rolled out by Departments of Health in NZ, UK and India, with over 2 million users to date. A follow-on program delivering cognitive behavioural therapy for depression prevention was successfully trialled among 1,200 at-risk teenagers.