Melissa Penny

Melissa Penny, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Head of the Disease Modelling Unit at at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and University of Basel. She has extensive experience in developing and applying mathematical and computational models to provide quantitative evidence to support infectious disease control and elimination decisions. Professor Penny has led a multi-institute collaboration that provided evidence to the World Health Organization (WHO) and other global stakeholders on the likely public health impact and cost-effectiveness of the malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS01, known as Mosquirix. Her most recent research focuses on analysing data and developing mathematical models and algorithms to understand pathogen, host, and intervention dynamics, with the goal to inform decisions during product development through to implementation and policy recommendations. This work includes new approaches with mechanistic models to inform quantitative target product profiles for novel malaria interventions. Her group has also developed new models of SARS-CoV-2 dynamics and applied them to inform decisions on novel interventions against COVID-19. She is also the member of several WHO scientific and technical working groups, as well as WHO Guideline Development Groups.