The ICARS Technical Advisory Forum
The ICARS Technical Advisory Forum – or TAF in short – was established in the fall of 2020, to provide scientific and expert advice to ICARS. The TAF reviews project proposals from potential partner LMICs and advises on the delivery of ICARS scientific activities. It brings together world-leading research expertise across human, animal and environmental health and takes a multidisciplinary approach.
TAF Members

Director of the Antimicrobial Resistance Centre, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
Prof. Clare Chandler
Clare Chandler is a Professor in Medical Anthropology and Director of the Antimicrobial Resistance Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Her expertise lie in the study of global health problems including antimicrobial resistance. She studies how such problems are configured, embodied and addressed across a range of actors in different spaces. Her current research, the ESRC funded Anti-Microbials In Society (AMIS) Programme includes empirical studies of antibiotic use by humans – in cities, villages, migrant settlements, health facilities; by animals – in small scale and industrial pig and poultry farms; and in plants. in Thailand and Uganda. The grant also funds the AMIS Hub web platform to profiles high quality social research on AMR. Clare also leads the social science research on fever care for the DfID funded FIEBRE programme in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Myanmar. Her additional studies are researching the history of antibiotic arrivals in colonial Eastern Africa, the evidence for one health WASH and biosecurity interventions, the awareness of antibiotic resistance amongst human and animal healthcare practitioners, measurement of antibiotic use in humans and animals in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), a history of the WASH sector and being a Host Institution for the Fleming Fund Fellowships scheme. Clare’s methodological expertise are in ethnography, mixed-methods studies, intervention design and evaluation of complex health interventions. She has a keen interest in capacity strengthening, and has provided technical advice to the UK Government, WHO, LMIC governments and the media on topics including Ebola, malaria and AMR.


Associate Professor, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark
Prof. Ulrika Enemark
Ulrika Enemark is a health economist and health systems researcher with special interest in 1) the interplay of need, care-seeking behaviour and financing mechanisms and the interlinkages with quality of care; 2) inequality in health & well-being and use of services, especially among elderly; and 3) cost and effect implications of organisational set-up of care services including healthcare associated infections. Linking to these areas UE has experience with survey design, methods for measuring quality of care, development of models for analysis of future financing strategies and analysing large data sets.
Ulrika Enemark has more than 20 years of extensive experience from developing countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe). She has ample experience working with ministries and development partners on feasibility studies, program formulation, appraisal, review and evaluation of national strategic programs as well as development assistance to the health and water & sanitation sector.


Chair of Veterinary Infectious Disease at the University of Liverpool and joint appointment at the International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya/UK
Prof. Eric Fèvre
Eric Fèvre’s team (www.zoonotic-diseases.org; Twitter: @ZoonoticDisease) is a grouping of epidemiologists, ecologists, biologists, veterinarians and medical practitioners interested in the biology and control of (re-)emerging diseases, involved in projects researching disease transmission and control at the interface between animals, humans and the environment. He obtained his BSc in Biology/Geography from the University of Bristol (UK), his MSc in Applied Parasitology and Medical Entomology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine. He held a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship 2009-2012. The UK Research Councils, UK DFID, the European Union, the Fleming Fund and the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health are current funders of the work. He is a member of several WHO committees, is a member of the Lancet Commission on One Health and the National AMR Technical Working Group in Kenya.


Director, Institute of Health Research, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana
Prof. Margaret Gyapong
A medical Anthropologist by training, Professor Gyapong is Director of the Institute of Health Research (IHR) and Coordinator of the Centre for Health Policy and Implementation Research (CHPIR) at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Ghana. Prior to joining the university in 2017, she spent almost 25 years as a researcher in the Ghana Health Service and was foundation Director of the Dodowa Health Research Centre from 2005 to 2016, transforming it from a small research station to an internationally acclaimed research Centre. Her interests are in socio-cultural aspects of tropical diseases, implementation research, Demographic Surveillance and maternal and child health. Currently, Prof. Gyapong is a member of the Sight Savers board of trustees, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute External Review Board, the task force for Global Health Campaign Effectiveness Advisory board, WHO Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) on Neglected tropical diseases, the WHO/AFRO Advisory Committee on Health Research and Development and advisor on capacity building and training in Malaria for the Havard TC Chan school of Public Health WHO rethinking malaria program. In Academia, Professor Gyapong is full Professor of Applied Health Social Science at UHAS, and adjunct professor of Global Health at Georgetown University. She has 149 publications in peer reviewed journals to her credit.


Principal Scientist, Sustainable Aquaculture, WorldFish, Penang, Malaysia
Dr. Chadag Vishnumurthy Mohan
Chadag Vishnumurthy Mohan is a Principal Scientist at WorldFish. WorldFish is part of One CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural innovation network. WorldFish is a nonprofit research and innovation institution that creates, advances and translates scientific research on aquatic food systems into scalable solutions with transformational impact on human wellbeing and the environment. Within WorldFish, Dr Mohan leads the aquatic animal health research cluster under the Sustainable Aquaculture Flagship of CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food systems. He also serves as the Research Lead for India, a scaling country for WorldFish. He holds PhD in aquatic animal pathology from the University of Stirling. His expertise includes aquatic food systems, nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture, one health encompassing health of animals, environment and people, epidemiology and surveillance, antimicrobial resistance and biosecurity governance. He spent 21 years at the College of Fisheries, University of Agricultural Sciences, Mangalore, India. Before joining WorldFish in April 2014, he worked for Intergovernmental Network of Aquaculture Centres in the Asia Pacific (NACA) based in Bangkok for 11 years, supporting sustainable aquaculture and aquatic animal health R&D programs in 18 Asia Pacific countries. He served as the Chairperson of Fish Health Section (FHS) of Asian Fisheries Society (AFS) for the period 2011-2014. He has authored/co-authored over 125 research papers.


Professor and MRC/DfID African Research Leader, Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Prof. Iruka Okeke
Iruka N Okeke is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a Fellow of the Nigerian and African Academies of Science. Her research group investigates the mechanisms bacteria use to colonize humans, cause disease and gain drug resistance. She also studies laboratory practice in Africa. Iruka is a member of Nigeria’s Technical Working Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and her laboratory currently provides the genomic surveillance service for Nigeria’s antimicrobial resistance surveillance system as part of a collaborative UK National Institute for Health-supported Global Health Research Unit. Iruka has served as a volunteer drug resistance consultant to Africa CDC, WHO and other organizations.
Iruka received B.Pharm., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), Nigeria and post-doctoral training at the University of Maryland, USA and Uppsala Universitet, Sweden. She has held Fulbright, International Federation for Science, Branco Weiss (Society-in-Science) and Institute for Advanced Studies (Berlin) fellowships as well as academic positions in Nigeria, the UK and the USA. Iruka is author/ co-author of several scientific articles and chapters as well as the books Divining Without Seeds: The case for strengthening laboratory medicine in Africa (Cornell Univ Press) and Genetics: Genes, Genomes and Evolution (Oxford Univ Press). She editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Laboratory Medicine.


Professor of Animal Health and Food Systems Economics at the University of Liverpool, UK
Prof. Jonathan Rushton
Jonathan Rushton is an agricultural economist who specialises in the economics of animal health and food systems. His principal research interests are the: Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) where he directs a global programme with OIE; economics of antimicrobial use and resistance in livestock; and assessment of the multidimensionality of food quality and public health. He has recently completed studies on the economics of antimicrobial use in livestock in SE Asia for FAO and the economics of new livestock vaccines for the EU funded SAPHIR project and is currently involved in research on antimicrobial use in livestock in Vietnam (VIPARC), India (DARPI) and the EU (ROADMAP). He is working with IIAD on the economic dimensions of sustainable laboratory systems, a project funded by OIE. Jonathan embraces One Health approaches in the search for solutions to society’s health problems.
Jonathan is professor of animal health and food systems economics at the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, University of Liverpool, leads a University Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Food Systems and is part of the N8 Agrifood programme. He is also adjunct Professor in the School of Behavioural, Cognitive & Social Sciences of the University of New England, Australia and president of the International Society for Economics and Social Sciences of Animal Health. In 2020 he became a Senior IIAD Fellow in Epidemiology at Texas A&M.


Professor of Environmental Microbiology, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Prof. Barth F. Smets
“I work at the interface of microbial ecology and environmental & public health engineering. Using experimental tools plus computational approaches, we study both curiosity-driven and mission-oriented questions, focusing on the microbiomes of water engineering applications. Examples include: the engineered nitrogen cycle (focus on anammox, comammox, and N2O); the link between microbiome dynamics and system performance and stability; biofilm composition and dynamics – especially in novel bioreactors; horizontal gene transfer and the fate of ARGs, and the fate of organic micro-pollutants. We try to understand the ecology of ARG and ARBs – based on experimental studies and the development of mathematical models at different scales – and to develop biology-inspired approaches to reduce ARG/ARB fluxes across environmental compartments.”
