Professor Vernon Lee is a preventive medicine physician with extensive global health experience in pandemic preparedness and response, infectious disease epidemiology and health policy and management. He played an instrumental role in developing and implementing Singapore’s COVID-19 pandemic response, and has
also responded to the 2003 SARS outbreak, 2009 influenza pandemic, and the 2016 Zika outbreak in Singapore.
Prof Lee previously served as Advisor to the Assistant Director General for Health, Security and Environment at the WHO headquarters in Geneva; Medical Epidemiologist in the WHO’s Country Office in Indonesia; and Head of the Biodefence Centre in the Singapore Armed Forces. Through his work, Prof Lee has been involved in major global health security collaborations, and in developing pandemic preparedness plans, risk assessment and disease management programmes. He continues to serve on expert committees at the international level.
An avid supporter of evidence-based health policy, Prof Lee has published about 200 scientific papers, many in top journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Lancet journals. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
Prof Lee graduated from medical school at the National University of Singapore. He also holds a PhD in epidemiology from the Australian National University, and the Master in Public Health and Master of Business Administration degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, USA.
