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 previous Scientific Director of KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and now chairs the Department of Global Health at the AMC as well as the executive board of the AIGHD. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers (H score 35), mainly on tuberculosis (TB), and has supervised 30 master and 27 PhD theses (8 ongoing).
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 operational research and cost-effectiveness and disease modeling. He has collaborated with national and local tuberculosis control programmes as well as research institutes in Asia, Africa and South America. Current specific research interests include TB diagnostics (phase III-IV evaluations, triage testing, drug resistance testing), prediction of TB disease (understanding disease progression, role of ‘trigger factors’, predictive assays), TB transmission and the socioeconomic context of TB.
Frank Cobelens is 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 programmes and research projects in tuberculosis and global health, including TB-MAC (mathematical modelling for TB), the STREAM trial (treatment shortening for MDR-TB) and the German Government’s Health Africa Program. He is in addition member of WHO’s Task Force for TB Research and founding member of the organizing committee of TBScience (The Union’s new basic and translational research program) and of the European Global Health Research Institutes Network.
