Christopher Dye


Christopher Dye FRS, FMedSci is a British biologist, epidemiologist and public health specialist who has held positions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the World Health Organization, Gresham College London and the University of Oxford.

Career

Chris Dye began a professional life as a biologist and ecologist but postgraduate research on mosquitoes led to a career in epidemiology and public health. Based at Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 1982-96, he studied bloodsucking insects as vectors of leishmaniasis, malaria and onchocerciasis in Africa, Asia and South America, and domestic and wild animals as reservoirs of human infection and disease.
Joining the World Health Organization in 1996, he developed ways of analyzing the vast quantities of routine surveillance data collected by government health departments worldwide ─ extracting signal from noise to devise better methods for understanding and controlling tuberculosis, malaria, and Ebola and Zika viruses. From 2006-09, he was also Gresham Professor of Physic, 35th in a lineage of professors that have given public lectures in the City of London since 1597.
As WHO Director of Strategy 2014-18, he served as science advisor to the Director General, oversaw the production and dissemination of health information by WHO press and libraries, and coordinated WHO’s work on health and the Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, where he is working to make a stronger case for prevention in public health. He is Epidemiology Advisor to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a member of Council of The Royal Society, and a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for the journal Science.

Honours and awards

Dye is a Fellow of The Royal Society, the Royal Society of Biology and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.

Selected publications

Further articles are listed by PubMed and Google Scholar. Science discussions and lectures have been broadcast by the BBC, Gresham College, YouTube, the British Academy, The Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Medicine.