Advisory Groups

Anthony is professor of global health and sustainable development at UCL, co-chair of the Lancet Countdown for climate and health action, and a former director of maternal, child and adolescent health at the World Health Organisation. He is senior adviser to ‘Children in All Policies (CAP-2030), an initiative involving WHO, UNICEF, the Lancet and nine countries, to place children at the centre of national policies to address climate change and the SDG goals.

Hugh is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London (UCL) where he also directs the Centre for Human Health and Performance. He is a consultant in a North London Intensive Care Unit. He has published more than 550 scientific articles. Hugh co-chaired two Lancet Commissions on Human Health and Climate Change, and now co-chairs the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

Professor Gong received his BS and MS degrees from Nanjing University and his PhD degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1990. He started his academic career at York University and then the University of Calgary. In 1994, he joined the University of California, Berkeley where he rose through the academic ranks to full Professor in 2001. He became the founding Chair of the Department of Earth System Science in 2016 and Dean of the Faculty of Science in 2017 at Tsinghua University.

Marina is the Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown, and climate change and health researcher at UCL. She trained as a clinical biochemist in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and holds a PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research background spans from toxicology through to environmental health and climate change, and she has previously carried out her research in the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires, the University of Cambridge, and the Francis Crick Institute. Working as a consultant for the NHS, she led a team of researchers in developing its Net Zero commitments, and is a member of the working group on health co-benefits in climate change mitigation policies of Italy's Superior Health Council.

Elizabeth is an environmental economist with over twenty five years’ of research experience. She is the Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. Her research addresses the design of policies and institutions to reduce climate change emissions, protect the environment, and improve the livelihoods of resource-dependent communities. Her recent focus includes climate change and systemic risk; and tracking the co-benefits of climate change mitigation and health, oriented particularly around food security and food systems. She was on the UK Defra Economic Advisory Panel for five years; and in 2019-20, Specialist Advisor to the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health, and Environment.

Kristie is Professor in the Center for Health and the Global Environment. She has been conducting research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change for nearly 25 years, focusing on understanding vulnerability; estimating impacts and future health risks; designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce the risks in multi-stressor environments; and estimating the health co-benefits of mitigation policies. She supported countries in Central America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific in assessing their vulnerability and implementing adaptation measures. She authored multiple national and international climate change assessments, has more than 200 publications, and has edited fours books on aspects of climate change.

Ian is Professor of Energy, Environment and Health the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources at UCL. His research fucuses on the nexus of climate change, energy and health in the built environment. He is the Principal Investigator for the International Energy Agency’s Annex 70 - Building Energy Epidemiology, a Co-Investigator on the UKRI Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, the NERC funded APEx London Air Pollution and ANTICIPATE projects, and Newton funded Capability and Energy Poverty in Mexico project. He is also the UCL lead for the IEA and UNEP Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction initiative, and has an interdisciplinary publication record.

Paul Ekins has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of London and is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at and Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. From 2004-2014 he was a Co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, and from 2014-19 its Deputy Director, leading on its Energy Resources theme, with research publications on low-carbon futures, fossil fuels and hydrogen.

Hilary Graham is a social scientist with a background in public health research. Her current research is exploring people’s perceptions of climate change. She is Professor of Health Sciences at the University of York, UK, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She received a CBE for services to social research in 2014.

Rachel Lowe is an ICREA Research Professor, Global Health Resilience Team Leader at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), and Director of the Lancet Countdown in Europe. She also holds a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She coordinates two Wellcome Trust digital technology, climate, and health projects, HARMONIZE and IDExtremes, which aim to provide robust data and modelling tools to build local resilience against emerging infectious disease threats in climate change hotspots. She is the co-coordinator of the Horizon Europe project IDAlert, which aims to tackle the emergence and transmission of zoonotic pathogens by developing novel indicators and innovative early warning systems to strengthen Europe’s resilience to emerging health threats.

Prof. Maria Nilsson is a professor in public health with the orientation climate change and health at the department of Epidemiology and Global Health at Umeå University in Sweden; a social scientist who holds a PhD in epidemiology and public health sciences. She is also the Chair of the Lancet Countdown in Europe. She was the integrating editor in the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and climate change, and co-leads the global working group on adaptation, planning, and resilience for health in the Lancet Countdown. She was awarded a fellowship from the Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT), under the auspices of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, for global health leadership.

Diarmid has worked on the issue for over 20 years, playing key roles in the first quantitative estimates of global health impacts of climate change, resolutions of the World Health Assembly, WHO global conferences, and the expansion of WHO’s climate change and health support to over 30 low and middle income countries. Diarmid is author of over 100 journal papers, reports, and book chapters, a lead author on three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and of the first health report to the UN Climate Negotiations.

Tadj Oreszczyn FCIBSE, PhD, CEng is Professor of Energy and Environment at the UCL Energy Institute. Tadj was founding Director of the UCL Energy Institute and established the RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology. Tadj currently leads the building theme for the UK Centre for Research in Energy Demand Solutions and is Principle Investigator of the research council Smart Energy Research Lab.

Paul is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is an environmental health scientist with expertise in health and climate change, and his main research focus is the impacts of climate change on allergens such as pollen and allergic diseases such as asthma.

Associate Professor Ying Zhang is a senior epidemiologist at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Her work has been dedicated to research, education and engagement on climate change and health in Australia and internationally for many years.

Wenjia Cai is now an associate professor of Global Change Economics in Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University. Her main research interests is the evaluation of climate mitigation’s impacts to environment and health. She has published papers in The Lancet Planetary Health, The Lancet, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Research Letters, Applied Energy and etc. She is the principal investigator of Lancet Countdown Regional Centre for Asia.

Stella is an environmental health specialist with a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health from the University of Basel. Her research areas include household air pollution and water, sanitation and hygiene. She has vast experience in randomized health interventions addressing environmental health problems, and studies generating knowledge about climate change and health in Peru.

Dr Georgiana Gordon-Strachan is the Director of the Lancet Countdown Regional Centre for Small Island Developing States. She is also the Director of the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit (TMRU) of the Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR). Dr Gordon-Strachan specialises in epidemiology, health policy, health services research, research methods, and Biostatistics. She is the former Director of the Mona Office for Research and Innovation, University of the West Indies, Mona.

Former Prime Minister of New Zealand & Former Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Associate Dean Pacific, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland

Chief Executive Officer, Amref Health Africa Group

Executive Director, Strategic Communications, European Climate Foundation & Senior Advisor, Global Communications Strategies, ClimateWorks Foundation

Director, Public Health and Environment Department, World Health Organization

Professor, School of Public Health, Cayetano Heredia University Peru & Former Minister of Health of Peru

Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBER) at University College London.

Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)

Founding Director and Chair, Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London

Director, Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, University of Cambridge & British Antarctic Survey Fellow

Senior Advisor, Public Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) & Director, NIEHS-WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health Sciences

Former Director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ministry of Health of China