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Research and Development Advisory Committee (RADAC); Advisory Committee on Research, Impact and Strategy (ACRIS)
The Research and Development Advisory Committee (RADAC) is an independent body which meets approximately every five years. At its last three meetings, RADAC’s focus has been on assessment of the scope, content and quality of Institute’s research and development activities. RADAC provides advice on future research directions to the Institute Board of Directors and senior management. Its membership comprises highly respected individuals who have influenced health and medical research, or have shaped health policy and practice globally.
The next meeting of this Committee will be held in February 2018 with a changed focus. Within the scope of the Institute’s mission as well as the Institute’s ambition to ‘make a difference’ and to have a major impact on health policy and practice worldwide, the Committee’s members are invited to:
- guide and assist the Institute in identifying key health challenges globally, over the next 5 – 10 years
- review the Institute’s current and planned areas of focus and its activities, in terms of impact or potential for impact, on the identified key health challenges
- make recommendations, regarding the best strategies for the Institute to pursue, to maximize its future impact on these challenges.
To reflect this change in focus, the Committee’s name was altered from RADAC to the Advisory Committee on Research, Impact and Strategy (ACRIS).
Professor Garry Jennings AO
Professor Jennings is Executive Director of Sydney Health Partners. He was the Director and Chief Executive Officer of Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. From January 2016 he was interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Adviser of the National Heart Foundation of Australia. He presently continues in the latter role and carries out research and clinical activities at Baker IDI and The Alfred Hospital.
He is past President of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institute, the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia, the Asia Pacific Society of Hypertension and Head of a WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Cardiovascular Health. He is a Board member of Ballarat Health Services, Nucleus Network and the Cardiac Society of Australia & New Zealand. He is a Trustee of the Baker Foundation and of the Foundation for High Blood Pressure Research
A cardiologist, he has a distinguished career in clinical practice and was previously Director of Cardiology at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne and Chair of the Division of Medicine.
He was foundation Chair of Nucleus Network Ltd and AMREP Council. He has been a Board member of the National Heart Foundation of Australia, Research Australia and several start up biotechnology companies.
Professor Michael H. Merson
Michael H. Merson, M.D., is the Wolfgang Joklik Professor of Global Health and vice president and vice provost for global strategy and programs at Duke University. Dr. Merson, who joined the Duke faculty in November 2006, was the founding director of the Duke Global Health Institute and served in that role from 2006 to 2017. In addition, Dr. Merson served as Vice Chancellor for Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Affairs from 2010 to 2016.
Dr. Merson graduated from Amherst College (BA) and the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. After serving as a medical intern and resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, he worked in the Enteric Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, and then served as the Chief Epidemiologist at the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
His research focused on the etiology and epidemiology of acute diarrheal diseases, including cholera, in developing countries and on the cause of travelers' diarrhea in persons visiting these countries. From 1999-2006, he also served as Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University, which undertakes research on HIV prevention in vulnerable and underserved populations in this country and abroad. He also led a number of training programs that strengthened the capacity of scientists in Russia, China, India and South Africa to undertake HIV/AIDS prevention research.
He has served in advisory capacities for UNAIDS, WHO, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, World Bank, Doris Duke Foundation, World Economic Forum, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and on several NIH review panels and advisory committees. He is a member of the Commission for Smart Global Health Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Professor Tan Chorh Chuan
Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed President of the National University of Singapore in December 2008. He concurrently serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National University Health System.
Professor Tan's additional appointments include Deputy Chairman of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR); Senior Advisor to the Governing Board of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School; Member, Board of Directors of the Monetary Authority of Singapore; and Member, Board of Directors of Mandai Safari Park Holdings. A renal physician, he obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.
He was Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine from 1997 to 2000. He served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, in which capacity he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. He held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President from 2004 to 2008. He also played a key role in setting up the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, in his capacity as Deputy Chairman of the Governing Board from 2004 to 2007.
As the inaugural Chief Executive of the National University Health System in 2008, he brought the NUS Medical and Dental Schools and the National University Hospital under single governance.
Professor Vikram Patel
Professor Patel is the Co-Founder and former Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Co-Director of the Centre for Control of Chronic Conditions at the Public Health Foundation of India, and the Co-Founder of Sangath, an Indian NGO dedicated to research in the areas of child development, adolescent health, and mental health. Since 2016 he has been Pershing Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of Harvard Medical School in Boston. He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship in 2015.
He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the UK. His book Where There Is No Psychiatrist has become a widely used manual for community mental health in developing countries. He was the lead editor of theLancet Series on Global Mental Health (2007) and the PLoS Medicine series on packages of care for mental and neurological disorders in developing countries (2009) and a co-editor of the Lancet series on promoting universal health care in India (2011).
He led the efforts to set up the Movement for Global Mental Health. He is based in Goa, India where he leads a program of public health research and capacity development with Sangath, the Public Health Foundation of India and other partners focusing on three broad areas: child development, adolescent health and mental health.
Professor Deborah Cook
Professor Cook graduated from McMaster Medical School (1985) and Internal Medicine Residency (1988). She completed General Internal Medicine Fellowship (1989) and the MSc (Design, Measurement and Evaluation Program) at McMaster. She then did a Critical Care Fellowship at Stanford University (1991).
Dr Cook practices intensive care medicine at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. At McMaster University, she is Co-Chair of the Evidence-Based Practice Center. As Academic Chair of Critical Care Medicine at St Joseph's Healthcare and McMaster University, she has trained many residents and mentored many junior faculty on how to conduct, publish and appraise clinical research.
Dr Cook is interested in risk factors for critical illness, prevention of ICU-acquired illness and complications, life support technology, ethics, and end-of-life choices for critically ill patients. Her research interests are in the design and conduct of multicenter studies, minimizing bias in systematic reviews of the literature, incorporation of diverse kinds of evidence into practice, and end of life decision-making.
As a Canada Research Chair of Research Transfer in Intensive Care, and former Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group, Dr. Cook has published over 600 peer-review articles and supervised many young trainees and successful faculty. She has received numerous local, national and international awards for her practice, teaching, mentoring and research. In 2016, Dr. Cook was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her global contributions to improving the care of critically ill patients.