Frank Cobelens is Professor of Global Health at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location Academic Medical Center (AMC), University of Amsterdam (UvA), and the Amsterdam Institute for Global health and Development (AIGHD), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Trained as a physician (University of Amsterdam, 1987) and infectious disease epidemiologist (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1996), Frank has 25 years of experience in research and education in poverty-related infectious diseases and, more recently, global health. He is past Scientific Director of KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and past president of the AIGHD executive board. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers (H score 51), mainly on tuberculosis (TB), and has supervised 37 master and 30 PhD theses (15 ongoing), mostly from low- and middle-income settings.
His research focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to problems at the interface of biomedical aspects of TB, its socioeconomic context and policies towards its control and elimination, combining population epidemiology with cost-effectiveness and disease modeling. He has collaborated with national and local tuberculosis control programs as well as research institutes in Asia, Africa and South America. Current specific research interests include development and evaluation of TB diagnosis and screening interventions and TB vaccines and understanding subclinical TB and disease progression in its socioeconomic context.
Frank Cobelens is a former member of WHO’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) on tuberculosis and has served on numerous WHO and Stop TB Partnership committees for guideline development and endorsement of new technologies. He has been Steering Committee/Advisory Board member of several large programs and research projects in tuberculosis and global health and is co-founder of the European Global Health Research Institutes Network, TBScience (The Union’s basic and translational research conference) and the African Conference on Innovations in Tuberculosis.
