Frank Cobelens
- Senior Fellow
- Professor of Global Health, Department of Global Health, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam
- Former Chair, Executive Board, AIGHD
Prof. Frank Cobelens MD MSc Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow and former Executive Chair of AIGHD. His scientific interest is in multidisciplinary approaches to problems at the interface of biomedical aspects of infectious diseases, socioeconomic context, and control policy. His recent work includes the causes and spread of anti-tuberculosis drug resistance, the development and evaluation of novel interventions for tuberculosis control, and biomedical mechanisms that define the relationship between poverty and infectious diseases.
Since 2008, he has led the tuberculosis research group at what later became AIGHD and the Department of Global Health of the Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, where he was appointed Full Professor of epidemiology and control of poverty-related infectious diseases in 2011. He has combined this position with that of KNCV’s Scientific Director since 2013. He also works closely with research groups around the world and has supervised numerous junior researchers and doctoral students at home and abroad.
He studied medicine in Amsterdam and communicable disease epidemiology in London, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam. He worked for several years in HIV/AIDS control and tropical and travel medicine. He became involved in epidemiological research on tuberculosis in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a Senior Epidemiologist with the Dutch NGO KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, one of the world’s leading technical agencies for tuberculosis control. Cobelens has served on several expert panels and advisory bodies for global infectious disease control, in particular tuberculosis, including the World Health Organisation’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Tuberculosis.