Mark Woodward is Chair of Statistics, Epidemiology and Women’s Health at Imperial College London and Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is also a visiting /honorary professor at the universities of Dundee, Glasgow and the West Indies. He is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Mark was Professor of Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford from September 2013 to July 2020 and has also been a professor at the universities of New York, Sydney and Johns Hopkins (adjunct).
He is the author of over a thousand scientific articles and two text-books on statistical methods in medical research, one of which has its fourth edition commissioned for 2025. He was named by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics as one of ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ in each of the last 11 years. As of June 2025, he has a H Factor of 188 with total citations of 164,594; 16 of his papers have over a thousand citations.
Mark has led four major international studies and directed the analytical research on three landmark collaborative studies, worldwide. His work on cardiovascular risk scores formed the basis of national guidelines in Scotland, and his work on kidney disease was used to produce new staging criteria for this disease. His total career grant awards total over £100 million from 64 successful applications.
He also has extensive experience in student teaching, postgraduate supervision and mentoring, including 14 PhD and 20 MSc students successfully completed. He has given training workshops in Botswana, China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Mark served on the governing council of the Institute of Statisticians and the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and is a fellow of the RSS, the European Society of Cardiology and the New York Academy of Medicine. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians of Thailand.
He has wide experience of development aid work in Africa and Asia, having undertaken 25 missions for aid agencies, such as the WHO. He has also assessed grants for six national medical research councils (including NHMRC) and served on the editorial boards of seven international journals.
Yakubu is a Research Fellow with the Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal & Torres Strait Research Program and the Health Systems’ Program on Implementation for Health Equity. He also co-leads The George Institute’s Ubuntu Initiative for Partnerships in Africa.
The Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program at The George Institute drives meaningful and ethical research and advocacy to transform the health and wellbeing of First Nations peoples and communities. The George Institute’s Health System’s Program on Implementation for Health Equity aims to enhance health and social outcomes in underserved communities by improving knowledge of research methodologies that address health equity through implementation research and embedding process evaluations within applied research. Through the Ubuntu Initiative, The George Institute seeks to expand the scope of its research engagement with researchers and institutions on the Africa continent in a culturally safe, people-centred and sustainable way.
Yakubu’s research interests includes understanding and improving governance at the intersection of health and social systems, improving the health of multi-cultural communities, conducting and evaluating complex interventions aimed at promoting health equity.
Yakubu is a Fellow of the West African College of Physicians as well as the Nigerian Postgraduate Medical College in Family Medicine. In addition to his clinical training, he earned an MPhil (Family Medicine) from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa, and an MBA (Health Units Management) from the Cyprus Institute of Marketing. While in Nigeria, his research and professional efforts were focused on understanding and improving the learning experiences of undergraduate and graduate trainees in family medicine, as well as identifying family-centred approaches to improving health service delivery.
He completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine and Health in Sydney and his PhD Thesis investigated global and domestic governance systems for skilled health worker migration, the extent to which they feature human rights norms, and the opportunities for achieving equitable global health workforce distribution.
Associate Professor Brendon Neuen is Program Lead, Renal and Metabolic at The George Institute for Global Health and a Staff Specialist Nephrologist and Director of Kidney Trials at Royal North Shore Hospital. He graduated in medicine at James Cook University with 1st Class Honours and an Academic Medal; completed a Masters in Global Health and Epidemiology from the University of Oxford; a PhD from the University of New South Wales; and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology.
He is an internationally recognised expert on cardio-kidney-metabolic health and serves as the Secretariat (Co-Chair) of the SGLT2 Inhibitor Meta-Analysis Cardio-Renal Trialists' Consortium (Smart C), which brings together data from over 90,000 patients from large-scale randomized trials to better understand the effects of this class of medicine in major patient groups. In addition, A/Prof Neuen is involved in the leadership of multiple ongoing international multi-centre randomized trials evaluating treatments to prevent kidney failure, cardiovascular events, or both. His work has directly informed more than 30 major international and national clinical practice guidelines, position papers and scientific statements which define best practice for the care of people with chronic kidney disease, including the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) Guidelines and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Standards of Care.
A/Prof Neuen is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications in general medical journals including The Lancet, BMJ and Nature Medicine, and specialty journals including Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, Circulation, and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the American Society of Nephrology and Nephrology Dialysis and Transplantation (flagship journal of the European Renal Association). His work is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, New South Wales Health, the Ramaciotti Foundation, as well as philanthropic sources, and has been recognised through multiple awards, including the Royal Society of New South Wales Ida Browne Medal, and the American Heart Association's Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award.
Alta Schutte is a SHARP Professor and Theme Lead for Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine at UNSW Sydney; and Professorial Fellow at The George Institute Australia. She holds honorary appointments at the North-West University and University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is the Past President of the International Society of Hypertension, Company Secretary of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, and Co-Chair of the Australian National Hypertension Taskforce.
Alta is a leading researcher with extensive experience in clinical trials and population-based studies in the field of blood pressure, hypertension and cardiovascular health. She has been the Chief Investigator of several multidisciplinary studies, published >450 papers in the field, and supervised over 85 postgraduate students. She is Chief Investigator of several Australian-funded trials and is a NHMRC Investigator Grant Leadership Fellow.
She is involved in numerous international consortia, such as the Global Burden of Disease study, the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, May Measurement Month global blood pressure screening campaign, World Health Organization working groups and the Lancet Commission of Hypertension. She is the senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines. She is Associate Editor of the journal, Hypertension, and has received numerous international awards for her work, most recently the 2022 American Heart Association’s Harriet Dustan Award, and 2023 Peter Sleight Excellence Award in Hypertension Clinical Research from the World Hypertension League.