Devi Sridhar

Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh

At the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar is a Professor and Chair of Global Public Health. At age 18, Sridhar became the youngest U.S. recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and holds MPhil and DPhil degrees from Oxford University as well as a B.S. from the Honors Medical Program at the University of Miami. Additionally, Sridhar is the Founding Director of the Global Health Governance Programme where her research focuses on how global institutions, finance, and rules can better serve the needs of people across the world. Sridhar has written two books, Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? and The Battle Against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance and the World Bank, and has one on the COVID-19 pandemic titled Preventable that is slated for release in May 2022. 

Prior to COVID-19, Sridhar’s work focused on infectious diseases and she even predicted the occurrence of a global pandemic. When COVID-19 emerged and Wuhan went into lockdown during mid-January 2020, Sridhar began to participate in media opportunities focused on making scientific information more understandable and digestible for the British public. She soon found herself fielding questions from colleagues on Britain’s COVID-19 herd immunity strategy and writing a piece for The Guardian on March 15, 2020 that addressed those same issues. Following that wide-reaching publication, her role in the pandemic grew public as she took on multiple advising roles, while continuing research at the University of Edinburgh, that included working with the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish Government. Additionally, she participated in various interviews and often appeared on television in order to share information on how to contain the virus and guide the public on best practices. She continues to provide invaluable advice to governments and advisory groups and has recently been appointed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh to honor her work during the pandemic.

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