Professor Alex R Cook
Faculty & Department
Joint Appointments
Professor, Statistics and Data Science, Science
Professor, Dean's Office, Medicine
Professor, Health Services and Systems Research (HSSR), Duke-NUS
Vice-Dean, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health
Jt Appt - Professor, Statistics and Data Science, Science
Professor, Dean's Office (Medicine), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom
Bachelor of Science (Statistics) Hons Class 1, Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom
Bio
Dr Alex Cook is a Professor in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he is also the Vice Dean of Research, the Domain Leader of the Biostatistics and Modelling Domain, and the director of the Centre for Epidemic Research and Modelling. He also holds joint appointments at the Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore, at the Department of Statistics and Data Science, NUS, and the Communicable Disease Centre at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore. He has been a faculty member at NUS since 2008, after three years working as a post-doc at the Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, and the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.
He works on infectious disease modelling and statistics, including dengue, COVID-19, influenza and other respiratory pathogens, and on population modelling to assess the effect of evolving demographics on non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. His team’s work—which has appeared in the national and international media, including the Straits Times, the Sunday Times, the Lianhe Zaobao, New Paper, Today, Reuters, Agence-France Presse, France 24, the Times of India, and Sky News—is often in close collaboration with government agencies, including in Singapore the Ministry of Health, the National Environment Agency, the Health Promotion Board and the Ministry of Defence, as well as with overseas partners. Examples of the contribution of his work to national policy making include:
(1) His team’s projections of the future burden of diabetes in Singapore was cited in the Committee of Supply as the Minister of Health declared ‘war’ on diabetes;
(2) His team’s evaluation of the impact of school closure on hand, foot and mouth disease transmission support’s the government’s relaxation of the policy;
(3) His close collaboration with the National Environment Agency has led to the development of a realtime dengue forecasting algorithm that is routinely used as part of Singapore’s vector control programme.
His team’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic earned them the award of the President’s Certificate of Commendation, while he won the Public Administration Medal (Silver) (COVID-19) from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Award for research from the National University Health System. In addition to his research, Dr Cook has won several awards for his teaching, including two faculty teaching awards from the Faculty of Science, one from the SSHSPH, and one from the university.
Contact Information
My team’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide technical advice to the government earned us the award of the President’s Certificate of Commendation, while I won the Pingat Pentadbiran Awam (Perak) (COVID-19) and the COVID-19 Resilience Medal from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Award for research from the National University Health System.
In addition to my research, I have won several awards for his teaching, including two faculty teaching awards from the Faculty of Science, one from the NUS Public Health, and one from the university.
My research draws upon diverse quantitative methodologies—from Bayesian statistics, to computer simulation models, to systems of ordi- nary differential equations, to health technology assessment—to solve real-world public health problems. The primary application area of my research is to infectious disease control, particularly to dengue, influenza and COVID-19. A secondary area of application has been to non-communicable disease control, looking at diabetes and its sequellae, tobacco control, and sodium reduction.
My team’s work benefits from the close working relationships I have cultivated with the Ministry of Health, Singapore, and other government agencies, which ensures that the projects I undertake are directly relevant to their needs. This close alignment of research and policy interests has the secondary benefit of helping publication, and our work has often appeared in leading disciplinary and general medical journals as a result.
One of the most high profile areas of my research, that I am occasionally recognised on the street for, is my team’s work on pandemics, including influenza A (H1N1) and COVID-19. My team developed what I believe was the first individual-based model of COVID-19 (published less than two weeks after the pandemic was announced, in Lancet Infectious Diseases), which was used to assess combinations of policies for control. We followed this up with papers using the model to assess the need for non-household isolation and the impact of lockdown duration and timing. During the pandemic, I have contributed to around fifty papers including in NEJM, JAMA or Lancet family journals.
Before the pandemic, much of my research focused on endemic diseases, especially dengue and influenza. My work on dengue has looked at forecasting and spatial risk assessment, while my work on influenza has focused on estimating attack rates by pooling multiple sources of data, the degree of waning of immunity over time, the timing of epidemics, and means to increase uptake of vaccination. Both areas of work have been published in leading disciplinary journals.
One of my papers projecting the burden of diabetes having been cited in Parliament in launching a national programme. Other work by my team has been seen by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and I’ve discussed my team’s work with several ministers. My expertise is reflected in over a thousand appearances in the media since 2020, commenting mostly on COVID-19 but also on dengue, influenza and HIV.
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