Professor Jane Hirst is Chair in Global Women’s Health at The George Institute for Global Health, UK, and the School of Public Health at Imperial College. She is also Visiting Professor in Global Women's Health at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Obstetrician, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

She is an active clinical researcher with projects focussed on global women’s health and investigating novel approaches to improve health care delivery. She has a particular interest in preventing cardiometabolic complications in women after high-risk pregnancy conditions such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.

Professor Hirst is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Her Fellowship title is “Pregnancy as an opportunity to improve women’s lifelong health”. She is PI for the SMART Health Pregnancy trial in India. This trial is being conducted in two rural districts in two states, and is evaluating a community-based intervention and digital clinical decision support tool to improve screening, management and referral of high risk conditions during pregnancy and in the in first year after birth.

Alice is a Research & Policy Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, based in the UK office. Alice joined The George Institute in early 2023 to work on the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project, an initiative to develop a UK-based policy for integrating sex and gender considerations into biomedical research.

A social scientist by background, Alice’s research interests sit at the intersection between gender and health. Prior to joining TGI, she worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where her research focused on the influence of social norms on family planning programmes and prevention of gender-based violence. She is particularly interested in how institutional norms and policies can shape women’s health and healthcare, and is passionate about translating research in this area into real-world impact.

Alice holds an MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford.

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.

Veronica Le Nevez is Head of Impact and Engagement Australia at The George Institute for Global Health, where she leads the Institute’s advocacy and policy engagement activities in Australia and the Pacific region to help increase the impact of the institute’s health and medical research. Programmes of activity include preventive health, food and nutrition, primary care, injury, better treatments for non-communicable diseases, women’s health and critical care, and others.

Veronica has spent her career in public policy, having worked extensively in the environment portfolio and in digital innovation. Prior to joining The George Institute, Veronica was General Manager Policy and Advocacy at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and held policy development and implementation roles at the University of Sydney. Veronica has a Bachelor of Science in Resource and Environmental Management, and a Master of Environmental Science from Macquarie University and is currently studying a Masters of Business Administration at the University of New South Wales.

A/Prof Laura Downey leads The George Institute’s global program for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). She is a conjoint Associate Professor in health economics and policy in the School of Population Health at UNSW, and an Advanced Research Fellow in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, UK.

Dr Downey's research is focused broadly on evaluating health system performance in relation to UHC goals, and developing innovative solutions to support equitable access to high quality, affordable care for the world's most at-risk populations. She is a passionate advocate for health equity, and in particular gender equity, where she uses data to champion greater visibility of women's health issues and more inclusive and participatory evidence to policy processes. She is a Senior Investigator and the Capacity Strengthening co-lead of a £10million NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Non-Communicable Diseases and Environmental Change, where her research focuses on community-driven multisectoral intervention design, delivery, and evaluation to strengthen health systems to protect populations in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh from environmental issues such as extreme heat and air pollution. She is an active invited advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and currently a member of the WHO advisory group for the use of Glucagon-like Peptide Receptor Agonists (GLP1-RAs) for the management of obesity. She was an invited expert member of the Health Economics advisory group to the UK Infected Blood Inquiry (2020-2024), whose work directly informed recommendations made by the Inquiry Chair to the UK Government on behalf of the tens of thousands of individuals who were infected with HIV and Hepatitis A, B, and C by the National Health Service. She was an advisor to the Indian federal government between 2015 -2019 to support the establishment of a core Health Technology Assessment (HTA) function within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and remains an active advisor to the Indian Institute of Public Health, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and numerous State governments across India.

Dr Downey has active research collaborators across Asia, Africa, and Europe and has worked in partnership with global institutions such as the World Health Organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. She has held previous positions with the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK, the Centre for Global Development Europe, and University College London.

Professor Neal is a UK-trained physician who has 25 years’ experience in clinical, epidemiological, and public health research with a focus on heart disease, stroke and diabetes. 

He has a longstanding interest in high blood pressure and diabetes and the potential for both clinical interventions and changes in the food supply to deliver health gains.  His work has been characterised by its focus on collaboration, quantitation, translation and impact.  

He holds professorial appointments at UNSW Sydney, Imperial College London, and an honorary appointment at the University of Sydney.  He has published some 450 scientific papers and since 2016 has been identified by Thomson Reuters as one of ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ - an acknowledgement bestowed on just a few thousand researchers across all disciplines worldwide.  

He has deep expertise in the conduct of large-scale clinical trials addressing cardiovascular disease but has also done a significant body of work addressing food policy issues related to sugars, fats, portion size and food labelling.