Sweden
I have focused my career in Public Health from an international perspective and in the application of new technologies. I have experience in artificial intelligence, programming, microbiology, epidemiology, epidemic intelligence, preparedness and response, food safety, animal health, climate change and vectorborne diseases. I believe in "One Health" initiative in which a multidisciplinary group of professionals is needed to address public health threats worldwide. In the past years, I have broaden my expertise on artificial intelligence and the implementation of machine learning and deep learning in public health, and on the use of social media for public health functions.
• Leader of the digitalisation of the event-based surveillance at ECDC, by developing an innovative, open-source, R-based tool to monitor automatically Twitter data for early warning of public health threats (epitweetr), and managing a four-year project to implement artificial intelligence in epidemic intelligence (EI) activities. • Support the improvement of the epidemic intelligence strategy and assess the feasibility and added value of new technologies, especially on artificial intelligence, in the epidemic intelligence activities. • Maintainer of the R package epitweetr. • Co-chair and member of the WHO Social Media Working Group for early detection. • Active participation in the ECDC COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. • Participation to the ECDC daily round table meeting. • Active contribution to the production of the ECDC Round Table meeting report, Communicable Disease Threat Reports and Annual Epidemiological Reports. • Provide advice to European and international stakeholders on the monitoring, interpretation and assessment of public health threats, including active participation in rapid risk assessment on communicable diseases and strengthening of the early detection of threats. • Assist Member States in the early detection and assessment of communicable disease threats and provide expertise and training as required. • Main responsible of data flow and processing for EI databases and determinants (IATA data) which includes more than 15 diseases. • Contribute to existing EI projects such as specific monitoring to mass gathering events, and plan and produce bi-weekly editorials for the ECDC Communicable Diseases Threat Reports. • Assist ECDC experts in the field of EI by providing trainings for 24/7 duties, Threat Detection Officer duties, and COVID-19 event-based surveillance duties. • Perform routine threat detection and threat assessment activities, including Threat Detection Officer and ECDC 24/7 duty system.
• Leader of the digitalisation of the event-based surveillance at ECDC. • Project manager of the project artificial intelligence (AI) for epidemic intelligence (EI) and epitweetr. • Maintainer of the R package epitweetr. • Promote epitweetr to the scientific and public health community. • Co-chair and member of the WHO Social Media Working Group for early detection. • Active participation in the ECDC COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. • Provide advice to and assist European and international stakeholders on the monitoring, interpretation and assessment of public health threats. • Main responsible of data flow and processing for EI databases. • Leader of the scientific part and technical content for the organisation of the 2019 National Focal Points meeting for Preparedness and Response and Threat Detection, Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) and International Health Regulations (IHR) with approximately 100 participants. • Contribute to existing EI projects such as specific monitoring to mass gathering events, and plan and produce bi-weekly editorials for the ECDC Communicable Diseases Threat Reports. • Implement and maintain databases, data management and maps for EI and monitoring of public health threats (e.g., MERS-CoV, Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo, measles, dengue, Chikungunya). • Perform analytical epidemiology on the event-based surveillance data using statistical and other software (R, ArcGIS, NodeXL, Excel, Qlik, macros in Excel, etc) • Organise and lecture internal training on NodeXL and R. • Perform routine threat detection and threat assessment activities, including Threat Detection Officer and ECDC 24/7 duty system. • Perform Food- and water-borne (FWD) duties, including monitoring of communicable disease threats through indicator- and event-based surveillance, liaison with EFSA, weekly reporting to the ECDC daily round table, among others. • Provide inputs to the Annual Threat Report for response and threat detection.
- Coordinating and managing the section annual work planning for 2019 and 2020, and ECDC Single Programming Document (SPD) 2019-2021 regarding section’s activities. - Monitoring activities and reporting on progress/status of the section’s activities. - Managing technical updates for and consultations with ECDC National Microbiology Focal Points through extranet and Newsletters. - Providing support to the coordination of microbiology activities in close collaboration with the Disease Programmes, mainly with Food- and Water-borne Diseases and Zoonoses Programme. - Coordinating activities with the communication section when it comes to microbiology activities and outputs from the technical content perspective. - Actively contributing to the data call and preliminary analysis of the survey on ‘Automated digital clinical laboratory information reporting to public health surveillance systems - state of the play 2018’. In addition, preparing the automated preliminary analysis report of the results through RStudio and Rmarkdown. - Organising and lecturing internal training on RStudio.
Thesis titled "Leveraging social media data and large language models for understanding public health behaviours in the context of infectious diseases and vaccination" https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/6a06987d-d2c0-4a59-8a8c-d0e3e2fe6621
"Surveillance of Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli in sentinel wild animal species: A One Health approach"
- Project manager of applied public health preparedness projects organised by ECDC, including budget management, organising regular project meetings and liaising with experts, providing inputs and co-authoring the ECDC technical reports, etc. The main projects are: preparedness for disease control and screening during sudden influxes of irregular migrants, risk ranking of infectious diseases for preparedness activities in the framework of Decision 1082, and guidance on strategic planning for public health preparedness. - Member of the ECDC Migrant Health Task Force jointly with other colleagues involved in migrants’ health topics such as HIV and other STI, tuberculosis, vaccine preventable diseases, epidemic intelligence and support, country preparedness, etc. - Assist, on an ad hoc basis, to the section’s contribution to requests in the field of public health preparedness from European Commission, WHO, and EU Member States. - Assist in the finalization of ECDC outputs related to migrants’ health, with the input of senior ECDC experts and project contractors. - Attendance to daily round table meetings to discuss with other ECDC experts on emerging events with an international scope as a representative for country preparedness.
In the EU preparedness group at Epidemic Intelligence and Response Section of the Surveillance and Response Support Unit. DUTIES: - Food- and water-borne (FWD) duties including monitoring of Epidemic Intelligence Information System (EPIS) for FWD, outbreak response, liaison with stakeholders, among others. - Legionella duties including monitoring travel-associated cases reported to The European Surveillance System, management of EPIS for Legionella, reporting clusters, liaison with stakeholders. - Response duty officer including focal point for stakeholders such as WHO, EFSA, European Commission; leading production of rapid risk assessment on different public health events on infectious diseases, etc. - Elaboration of annual report of Campylobacter and Leptospirosis on 2014 data.
In the Microbiology Coordination Section at the Office of the Chief Scientist Unit DUTIES: - Realization of the data collection, management, verification, analysis and reporting of the first data survey on laboratories capabilities and capacities in European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) countries (EULabCap); jointly with other members of the team - Supporting Head of the Section in monitoring and planning activities and Public Health Microbiology (PHM) projects using Management Information System, Planning Tool for Work Programme Preparation. - Managing technical updates of microbiology content and liaise with Microbiology Focal Points in member states including monthly newsletters, updating microbiology extranet and other ad hoc communication through email and audio conferences. - Preparing content for dissemination of the PHM programme (intranet, internal blog and microbiology web page). - Assisting in organizing internal training activities and chairing breakout groups in external meetings. - Collaborate in on-going projects within the section such as EULabServe (directory of services provided by laboratories in EU/EEA countries) and External Quality Assessment scheme.
In the Surveillance Data Analysis Section. DUTIES: - Databases management of foodborne outbreaks of the Spanish National Network of Epidemiological Surveillance (RENAVE). - Descriptive analysis of foodborne outbreaks in RENAVE. - Drafting reports to be published in the Weekly Epidemiological Bulleting on: * Foodborne outbreaks from 2008 to 2012. * Foodborne outbreaks of chemical origin. * Foodborne outbreaks related to consumption of raw milk. - Knowing functioning of foodborne outbreaks and diseases surveillance in the CNE. - Attendance to seminars and surveillance meetings at the CNE. - Attendance to a 17.5-hours course entitled "Spatial analysis of diseases" by the National School of Public Health (ENS-ISCIII) to reinforce my knowledge on elaborating epidemiological maps.