Professor Sheikh Taslim Ali joined the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong in 2015. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Statistics (Honours) in 2006; and Master of Science in Statistics (Specialisation: Biostatistics, Econometrics) in 2008. He earned his Ph.D. in Statistics (Stochastic Epidemic Modelling) in 2015. He had a brief industrial experience in analytics before joining for his Ph.D programme. He also successfully pursued his Split-Site Ph.D. training programme from School of Public Health, Imperial College London, during 2011-2012.

Professor Ali’s research interests are mathematical and statistical epidemiology, modelling of infectious diseases and optimisation of control policies. The main focus of his current research is to understand the infectious disease dynamics (including influenza, COVID-19, RSV, hand-foot-and-mouth disease, dengue and other vector-borne diseases) under the effect of time-varying interventions and seasonal forces (e.g. meteorological, pollutants and socio-economic). He develops the general statistical/mechanistic models for disease outbreaks prediction/forecast, with the aim of determining how the effectiveness of containment and mitigation policies depends on disease severity. He holds the research grants from Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF) and General Research Fund (GRF) of Research Grants Council, Hong Kong as PI (HKD 9M) and Co-PI. He is a course coordinator of Introduction to Biostatistics (CMED6100), one of the core courses of the Master of Public Health curriculum at the University of Hong Kong.

Professor Ali is a Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enabled Causal Inference for Disease Control” (Programme 3) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health at the Hong Kong Science Park. He is an Editorial Board Member for PLOS Global Public Health journal. He also serves as an academic reviewer of scientific manuscripts for more than 25 international journals, including Nature Communication, Nature Human Behaviour, Eurosurveillance, Environmental Health Perspective, Emerging Infectious Diseases, BMC Infectious Disease, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Journal of Theoretical Biology, and Epidemics.

Awards:

• Research Fellowship Scheme (HMRF), Health Bureau, Govt. of Hong Kong SAR, 2024.
• The top 1% scholar worldwide by Citations (Clarivate Analytics), 2023, LINK.
• CSC Research Impact Awards 2021-highly commended entry (by Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK), LINK.
• Faculty Research Output Prize 2021 (HKUMed, HKSAR).
• Commonwealth Split-Site PhD Scholarship Award 2011-12, UK, (by Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK), LINK.
• Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) 2010-15 as JRF and SRF (by University Grants Commission, INDIA).
• Two Gold Medals for top academic excellence in M.Sc. (Statistics), 2008 (by Karnatak University, INDIA), LINK.

Google Scholar: (*joint-first author, ^†senior author, ^#corresponding author)

1. Ali ST, Chen D, Lim WW, Yeung A, Adam DC, Lau YC, Lau HYE, Wong JTY, Xiao J, Ho F, Gao H, Wang L, Xu XK, Du Z, Wu P, Leung GM, Cowling BJ; Insights into COVID-19 epidemiology and control from temporal changes in serial interval distributions in Hong Kong. Am. J. Epidemiol. (2024), kwae220. [LINK, IF 5.00 (2024), rank 48/207 Public, Environmental & Occupational Health]
2. Ali ST, Lau YC, Shan S, Ryu S, Du Z, Wang L, Xu X, Xiong J, Chen D, Tae J, Tsang TK, Wu P, Lau EHY, Cowling BJ; Prediction of upcoming global infection burden of influenza seasons after relaxation of public health and social measures for COVID-19 pandemic, Lancet Global Health, 2022, 10(11), e1612-22. [LINK, IF 38.93 (2022), rank 4/793 under the category of “Medicine”]
3. Chen D, Lau YC, Xu XK, Wang L, Du Z, Tsang T, Wu P, Lau HYE, Wallinga J, Cowling BJ, Ali ST^†; Inferring time-varying generation time, serial interval and incubation period distributions for COVID-19, Nature Communication, 2022, 13 (1): 7727. [LINK, IF 17.69 (2021), rank 7/71 Multidisciplinary Sciences]
4. Ali ST, Cowling BJ, Wong JY, Chen D, Shan S, Lau EHY, He D, Tian L, Li Z, Wu P; Influenza seasonality and its environmental driving factors in mainland China and Hong Kong, Science of the Total Environment (2022), 818, 151724. [LINK, IF 8.00 (2021), rank 25/274 Environmental Sciences]
5. Ali ST, Cowling BJ; Influenza Virus: Tracking, Predicting and Forecasting. Annual Review of Public Health (2021), 42:43-57. [LINK, IF 21.98 (2021), rank 4/203 Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health (Science)
6. Ali ST, Wang L, Lau EHY, Xu X, Du Z, Wu Y, Leung GM, Cowling BJ; Serial interval of SARS-CoV-2 was shortened over time by non-pharmaceutical interventions. Science (2020), 369, 6507, pp. 1106-1109. [LINK, IF 47.73 (2020), rank 2/64 multidisciplinary sciences]
7. Cowling BJ, Ali ST*, Ng TWY, Tsang TK, Li JCM, Fong MW, et al. Impact assessment of non-pharmaceutical interventions against coronavirus disease 2019 and influenza in Hong Kong: an observational study. Lancet Public Health. (2020) 5 (5), e279-e288. [LINK, IF 21.65 (2020), rank 5/89 infectious diseases]
8. Ali ST, Cowling BJ, Lau EHY, Fang VJ and Leung GM; Mitigation of influenza B epidemic with school closures, Hong Kong, 2018. Emerg. Infect. Dis (2018); 24(11), 2071-2073. [LINK, IF 7.42 (2018), rank 5/89 infectious diseases]
9. Ali ST, Wu P, Cauchemez S, He D, Fang VJ, Cowling BJ and Linwei T; Ambient ozone and influenza transmissibility in Hong Kong. Eur. Respir. J. (2018); 51 (5), 1800369 [LINK, IF 12.24 (2018), rank 4/63 respiratory system]
10. Ali ST^#, Kadi AS and Ferguson NM; Transmission dynamics of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in India: The impact of holiday related school closure. Epidemics (2013); 5 157-163 [LINK, IF 2.38 (2013), rank 31/89 infectious diseases].