Helen and Francis Zimmern Professorship in Population Health

Infectious disease epidemiology involves the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of diseases caused by infectious agents in populations. Infectious disease epidemiologists investigate the transmission dynamics of pathogens, identify risk factors for infection, and evaluate strategies to prevent and control epidemics and pandemics.

Born in Reading, United Kingdom, Professor Ben Cowling graduated with a BSc from the University of Warwick in 2000 and a PhD in Medical Statistics from the same university in 2003. He joined the Department of Community Medicine at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) in October 2004. Over time he rose through the academic ranks, being awarded tenure in 2013, full professorship in 2015 at the age of 36, and Chair of Epidemiology in 2021.

Over the last 20 years, Professor Cowling has conducted research on the epidemiology of respiratory virus infections including COVID-19 and influenza. In recent years he has designed and implemented large field studies of influenza virus infection and transmission in the community, as well as vaccine trials and vaccine effectiveness studies. His work on influenza and COVID-19 vaccines has informed policy recommendations in Hong Kong and worldwide.

He has been awarded several large grants including a large Theme-Based Research Grant on individual and population immunity to influenza (2020-25), and major grants from the US National Institutes of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015 he was awarded a Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, and in 2020 he was awarded an Research Grants Council  (RGC) Senior Research Fellowship.

Since November 2020, Professor Cowling has held the position of Lead Scientist at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D24H), supported by the Inno@HK programme at Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. The work of this laboratory examines how artificial intelligence methods can be used to improve health.

In addition to his academic work, he serves on several advisory committees in Hong Kong and a number of WHO working groups. He has co-directed the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control at HKU since 2018.

He currently supervises 48 research postgraduate students and has graduated more than 65 research postgraduates. He has delivered hundreds of lectures, presentations and symposia at both local and international conferences. He has published a comprehensive body of research, which by October 2024 includes more than 760 articles that collectively have been cited more than 50,000 times. His “h-index” is 92, and he has been a Clarivate Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher” since 2021 and among the “top 1% most cited scientists” since 2014.

In 2019 he was a founding member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences. In 2021 he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to public health and COVID-19 research.