History
The formation of GnosisGIS took place during a Team Residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. The aim of the Team Residency was to develop a network of collaborating health workers and earth scientists dedicated to development of global computer-based models that can be used for improved control programs for schistosomiasis and other snail-borne diseases of medical and veterinary importance. The scope of the organization has since been expanded to include other infectious diseases of medical and veterinary importance.
Objectives
The objectives of the GnosisGIS network are to:
- encourage research in geo-health applications and promote scientific exchange between individuals and organizations;
- co-organize and host scientific meetings on topics relevant to geospatial health research;
- work towards collaboration with international organizations and with national, regional institutions in matters involving geospatial technologies;
- contribute to the journal Geospatial Health and other publication channels that promote use of geospatial tools;
- stimulate development of an International School of Geospatial Health to promote effective utilization of geospatial tools for health;
Executive Committee
The routine business of GnosisGIS is transacted by an elected Executive Committee of 10 officers. Current Executive Committee Members are:
Dr. Sherif Amer is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Research activities focus on the application of GIS/RS for spatial planning of health services, analysis of socio-spatial health seeking patterns, and the relation between socio-economic characteristics, life style and health status, mainly at urban and regional scale. He has led long-term capacity development assignments for, and in collaboration with, academic partners in the Global South, in countries such as Indonesia, China, Malawi, Egypt, Jordan, Tanzania and Rwanda.
Laura Rinaldi (MSc, Phd) is Full Professor of Parasitology and Parasitic Diseases, Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Production, University of Naples Federico II. She became Associate Member of the European Veterinary Parasitology College in 2006 and received the International “Peter Nansen Young Scientist” Award given by the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology (WAAVP) in 2011. She is co-founders and Associate Editor of the Journal Geospatial Health and from 2012- 2020 she was the President of GnosisGIS. Since 2020 she has been designed Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Diagnosis of Intestinal Helminths and Protozoa. The main research topics of Laura Rinaldi are focusing on epidemiology (using geospatial tools), diagnosis (using traditional and innovative techniques) and control of protozoa, helminthes and artropoda of veterinary and human interest
Dr. Donal Bisanzio, DVM, PhD, is Senior Epidemiologist at RTI International, Washington DC, USA and Honorary Assistant Professor at University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK. Dr. Bisanzio holds a degree and PhD in veterinary medicine, and has more than 15 years of experience in global health, with a particular focus on vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. Dr. Bisanzio has extensive experience and specialization in infectious diseases in humans and animals, particularly in improving the effectiveness of control and surveillance systems, and is highly skilled in applying spatio-temporal statistical models.
I graduated from Imperial College, London, with a BSc Hons in Zoology and stayed on to complete a PhD in Biology focusing on the epidemiology of parasitic infections in developing countries, mainly in Africa. My interest in parasite epidemiology continued at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Cambridge University and then Durham University. At Durham I was full-time Deputy Director of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing from 2008-13, before moving full-time into the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health (SMPH). I am currently Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Population Health Sciences at Newcastle University, having been transferred in 2017 after the closure of SMPH.
Dr. Behzad Kiani earned his PhD from Mashhad Medical School, Iran, in 2017, marking the initiation of his illustrious academic journey. Behzad served as an Assistant Professor at the same Department from 2018 to 2022, where he contributed significantly to the field through his teaching and research endeavors. He then broadened his horizons as a Postdoctoral Researcher working on urban health at the University of Montreal, Canada, from 2022 to 2023, delving deeper into the intricacies of spatial epidemiology.
Currently, Behzad holds the position of Research Fellow of Infectious Diseases Spatial Epidemiology at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Australia. His research interests encompass geoinformatics and spatial epidemiology, with a focus on digital health and methodological excellence in spatial epidemiology. Behzad’s home page.
Fedor is Research Scientist in the Federal Center for Animal Health (ARRIAH), Russian Federation. Holds a PhD in Geography from Moscow State University. His primary research interests include application of GIS and modeling approaches in assessing risks of dangerous livestock diseases’ spread. Fedor participates in number of international research projects on medical and veterinary geography, and teaches courses on GIS, spatial statistics and disease spread modeling.
Jeffrey C. Luvall is currently employed by NASA as a senior research scientist at Marshall Space Flight Center. He holds a B.S. (1974, forestry) and an M.S. (1976, forest ecology) from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and a Ph.D. (1984, tropical forest ecology) from the University of Georgia, Athens. His research area specializes in using remote sensing to study precision agriculture, forest ecology, phenology and microclimatology on a landscape scale across many types of ecosystems using a variety of aircraft based multispectral visible and thermal scanners.
Prixia del Mar Nieto has a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Master of Public Health, and PhD degree. Her interests and expertise are focused on use of geographic information systems (GIS) for public health surveillance and response to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Latin America and the USA. Dr. Nieto’s work as researcher and consultant have focused on different areas: environment, socio economics, demographics and behavioral factors that influence the epidemiology of diseases. Interests: Latin America, environmental epidemiology, neglected tropical diseases, poverty, women equality, medical geography, one health, global health, disease control.
Prof. Samson Mukaratirwa holds a position of Research Professor at the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, One Health Center for Zoonoses and Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Saint Kitts, West Indies. His main research interest is in a variety of tropical parasitic diseases of economic and public health importance and mainly focusing on "Neglected Parasitic Zoonoses" affecting the resource-poor communities in Africa and this includes malaria, schistosomiasis, Taenia solium cysticercosis, fasciolosis and trichinellosis.
Ricardo J. Soares Magalhaes (LMV MSc PhD DiplECVPH) is Associate Professor of Population Health and Biosecurityat the School of Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland, Australia. He is an infectious disease epidemiologist and biosecurity expert in with qualifications in both human and veterinary public health. He leads the UQ’s Spatial Epidemiology Laboratory (www.spatialepilab.com), a One Health medical geography group within the University of Queensland, Australia.
Dr. Anna-Sofie Stensgaard is an Assistant professor at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen. She also heads the Mandahl-Barth Research Centre for Biodiversity, Health and Climate that address and communicate knowledge about the relationship between climate, biodiversity and infectious disease, with a primary focus on snail-borne parasitic infections. Dr. Stensgaard has >10 yrs of experience in applying macro-ecological theory and geospatial tools to the study of spatio-temporal variation in vector-borne disease patterns, to tackle the challenging exploration of their responses to global change.
Yves Tourre is a senior climate scientist and a manager with climate application-oriented experience. His major strengths are: diagnostic studies of global climate variability; fostering international scientific cooperation; capacity building between multidisciplinary teams; all with multi-cultural communication skills. During the past 25 years, besides being an engineer at Meteo-France, his professional experience as a senior scientist at LDEO of Columbia University and was the first Director of Training and Education at the International Research Institute (IRI) of the Earth Institute of Columbia University.
Penelope Vounatsou has a background in Mathematics, training in Environmental Sciences and holds a PhD in Statistics from the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College, London. She is the head of the Biostatistics Unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) an associate institute of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Major areas of methodological research include spatio-temporal modelling for disease burden estimation and surveillance, diagnostic error evaluation, cohort data modelling, exposure modelling, casual inference, meta-analysis and Bayesian computation. Primary application areas involve malaria, anaemia, neglected diseases, HIV, mortality, cancer and environmental epidemiology.