Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)

Scientific independence and transparency are core principles for VAC4EU. The ADVANCE Code of Conduct, to which VAC4EU adheres, recommends peer review of study deliverables (e.g., protocol, reports, etc.) with an independent board of experts. To this end, VAC4EU has established a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The scope of the VAC4EU SAB is to provide independent external review of key study documents, with a focus on scientific soundness and interpretation of results. Currently, the SAB is comprised of ten experts, detailed below.

Wan-Ting Huang

WEBSITE ASSET 2-01-04-01 Want-Ting Huang

Dr Huang is a physician-epidemiologist, educated and trained in pediatrics and infectious diseases in Taiwan. She holds adjunct faculty appointments in the National Taiwan University Global Health Program and Children’s Hospital. In her previous role as Chief Medical Officer at Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, she led modernization ofthe vaccine safety infrastructure in Taiwan, with a primary focus on applying real-world data to inform the use of vaccines. Dr Huang is/has been actively involved in multi-country collaborative vaccine safety projects, both in resource-poor and -rich study settings. She guides the monitoring and evaluation of the work of the Brighton Collaboration Safety Platform for Emergency vACines (SPEAC) project to ensure standards and tools (e.g., case definitions) are valid and applicable across global settings.

Steve Black

Dr. Steven Black is a pediatric infectious disease specialist who received degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of California Santa Barbara and an MD degree from the University of California San Diego. He completed a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco. He has spent more than 30 years conducting clinical trials and safety studies of vaccines including being the principal investigator in five pivotal licensure trials and six phase four post marketing trials. He has also conducted numerous phase 1-2 clinical trials. He is co-Director of the 30 country Global Vaccine Data network currently engaged in the safety evaluation of COVID-19 and other vaccines. He is also PI for the CEPI funded BRAVE project which is developing background rates for potential vaccine adverse events in Africa as well as Meta DSMB lead for the CEPI funded SPEAC project. He is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio USA and Honorary Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is editor in chief of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Robert Platt

Robert Platt is Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, and of Pediatrics, at McGill University. He holds the Albert Boehringer I endowed chair in Pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Platt is Principal Investigator of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES). His research focuses on improving methods for the study of medications using administrative data, with an emphasis on methods for causal inference and a substantive focus on medications in pregnancy. Dr. Platt is an editor-in-chief of Statistics in Medicine and is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Epidemiology and Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. He has published over 400 articles, one book and several book chapters on biostatistics and epidemiology. Dr. Platt is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.

Anders Hviid

Anders Hviid is the Head of the Department of Epidemiology Research at Statens Serum Institut and a Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Copenhagen. With over 20 years of experience, he specializes in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of vaccines using nationwide health registers. His landmark studies on the MMR vaccine and autism, thimerosal in vaccines, and HPV vaccine safety have been significant contributions to global vaccine policy. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was instrumental in identifying links between vaccines and rare adverse events, including TTS and myocarditis. He leads multiple international projects, including Global Vaccine Data Network initiatives on Covid-19 vaccine safety and EMA-funded Nordic collaborations on the safety and effectiveness of Covid-19 and influenza vaccines. His work continues to influence public health strategies worldwide.

Ian Douglas

Ian is interested in pharmacoepidemiology, and in particular, how large electronic health record databases can be used to investigate the effects of drugs – both harmful and beneficial. He is exploring methodologies to minimize some of the biases inherent in the research of drug effects, and his current areas of interest include optimising case-only approaches to study design, the use of non-interventional data to estimate intended treatment effects, and quantitative bias analysis. Ian is a Professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and has previously worked as Safety Manager at GlaxoSmithKline and a Safety Assessor at the UK Medicines Control Agency.

Liz Miller

Biography currently under development.

Caitlin Dodd

Biography currently under development.

Xavier Kurz

Xavier Kurz is a medical doctor from Liege, Belgium, specialised in tropical medicine and public health. He obtained a MSc and a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University, Montreal. He joined the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2005 where he worked in the areas of pharmacovigilance, risk management and data analytics. He retired from the EMA in 2023.

Julia Stowe

Dr Julia Stowe has worked in clinical, academic and government settings on the evaluation and monitoring of numerous vaccine programmes including COVID-19, pandemic flu, shingles, MMR, RSV and rotavirus. She has worked in the Immunisation and Vaccine Preventable Diseases Division at the UK Health Security Agency since 1999 providing scientific, technical and surveillance leadership on real-world data to monitor disease burden of vaccine preventable diseases and evaluating the impact of routine vaccine programmes in terms of vaccine safety and effectiveness. Julia gained her PhD in 2017 entitled “Methodological challenges in post-licensure vaccine safety studies using large routinely collected datasets” which comprised of seven published studies which were carried out in response to several different pertinent concerns relevant to the UK’s immunisation schedule. Julia coordinated the implementation of UKHSA’s first vaccine register during the COVID-19 pandemic and has led the development of research proposals, writing scientific reports and papers for publication and presented epidemiological findings nationally and internationally at meetings and conferences.

Nick Andrews

Prof Nick Andrews, PhD works at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) as a senior Statistician. His current job is Head of Vaccines Analysis within the Immunisation Department. He has been at UKHSA and its predecessor organisations all his career working mainly in the vaccine field. He uses various statistical methods to analyse health data. Projects include phase 1-4 vaccine trials, retrospective cohort studies, case-control studies, self-controlled case-series studies, post licensure vaccine safety and effectiveness studies, assay development and disease modelling. This work has led to over 400 publications. He regularly presents results of his work to the UK Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation. Prof Andrews is a member of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and on the WHO SAGE working group for Malaria Vaccines.