SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
The role of the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center's Scientific Advisory Board is to provide independent guidance and recommendations to the Center on its strategy and goals. Board members meet with Center leadership every second year to review the Center's scientific progress and to provide input on the Center's research strategy, helping to identify emerging research opportunities and advising on possible ways to enhance the impact and visibility of the Center’s research.
Anja C. Andersen
Anja is a professor of astrophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Since 2017, she has been professor for public understanding of science and technology at NBI. Her research focuses on mapping how cosmic dust forms in the universe, and the impact it has on planet formation, star evolution, and observations of the early universe. Anja is an active communicator of astronomical research, having published several popular-science books and nearly 100 scientific publications, along with articles on research policy as well as gender in academia. She has served as a reviewer and evaluator for several international research foundations, including the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Research Foundation (ERC).
Currently host of two popular-science podcasts, “Flyvende tallerken” (“The Flying Plate”) and “Videnskab fra vilde hjerner” (“Science from Wild Brains”), Anja is regularly interviewed by the media on topics related to astrophysics, space physics, space technology, and gender in academia. She has received several prizes for outstanding public outreach, such as Rungstedlundprisen (2024); Hørup’s Debate Prize for promoting strong democratic science debate (2022); the Danish Society for Women in Science (DANWISE) award for exceptional efforts to improve diversity in higher education (2021); the EU Descartes prize for Outstanding Science Communication (2005), and the National Danish Award for Outstanding Public Outreach by the Danish Minister of Research (2004).
Brian Castellani
Brian is Director of the Research Methods Centre and Co-Director of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University (United Kingdom). He is also Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry (Northeastern Ohio Medical University, United States), Co-investigator for the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (United Kingdom), Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa), and a Fellow of the UK National Academy of Social Sciences. Since 2015, he and his colleagues have been developing COMPLEX-IT, a new case-based approach to modelling social complexity, which they have used to help researchers, policy evaluators, and public-sector organisations address a variety of complex public-health issues. Brian also runs InSPIRE, a UK-based research and policy consortium for mitigating the impact that air pollution and multiple environmental exposures (exposome) have on brain health across the life course. His book with Lasse Gerrits, The Atlas of Social Complexity (2024), maps the evolution of our understanding of social complexity. Link
Huub Dijstelbloem
Huub is Professor of Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Politics and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Central to his work is building bridges between science, research, society, and policymaking as well as methodological and conceptual innovation. Huub was previously affiliated with the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) and the Rathenau Institute.
Karien Stronks
Karien is a Professor of Public Health at the Academic Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam/Amsterdam UMC (the Netherlands). She seeks to generate evidence on how the position of an individual in society impacts their health and leads to inequalities in health at the population level. For 30 years, Karien has focused on understanding why health inequalities arise and how to effectively combat them. As Professor of Public Health, she has worked with observational studies using a wide range of study designs (cross-sectional and cohort studies, international comparative studies, questionnaire validation, qualitative studies) to map the mechanisms underlying socio-economic and ethnic inequalities in health, related to biomedical (e.g., cardiovascular risks), behavioural (e.g., dietary habits) and psychosocial factors (e.g., discrimination), and health care (e.g., adverse events).
Karien also studies the effectiveness of possible strategies to prevent these inequalities from arising, through randomised-controlled trials (e.g., culturally targeted intervention to prevent type 2 diabetes mellitus), natural experiments (e.g., impact of urban-regeneration programme on mental health), developmental evaluations (e.g., role of a knowledge broker in health policy at the local level), and process evaluations (e.g., conditions for a successful development of intersectoral local health policy). To embrace the complexity of public-health problems, Karien has recently applied ‘systems-science’ tools — including computational models — to understand inequalities as well as to develop strategies to effectively reduce them.
David Taylor-Robinson
David is the W.H. Duncan Professor of Health Inequalities and Professor of Public Health and Policy at the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom). He is an affiliate Professor of Child Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. He works clinically as a Consultant in Public Health at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.
David leads Liverpool’s Health Inequalities Policy Research group (HIPR). HIPR’s research focuses on improving health and reducing inequalities through the study of the determinants of health and well-being, and the policies that impact them. David recently led the N8/NHSA Child of the North initiative, focused on post-COVID levelling up for child health and well-being.