Maysoon is an infectious disease epidemiologist and the co-director of the research group.  Over the past 19 years she has focused primarily on conducting operational health research programmes in low-income countries especially in crises affected settings. She has worked with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Malawi, Save the Children USA in Ethiopia, The Aurum Institute for Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in South Africa, as well as the Sudan Federal Ministry of Health, and consults for various other organizations, primarily supporting refugee health operational research with UNCHR across the Middle East, East Africa and Asia.

Most recently, she has led research and advocacy efforts on mortality estimations during the 2018-2019 uprising In the Sudan. Currently within the group she focuses mostly on the conduct and promotion of a community led epidemiological research approach and how this can shape national and international epidemic preparedness and response. 

Nada is a medical doctor and epidemiologist with extensive experience in public health programming in humanitarian settings. She filled a variety of technical advisory and programmatic roles, supporting design, delivery and monitoring of health programmes in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkey among other crises. 

In her current role at the LHSTM, Nada is the lead researcher for RECAP’s Work Stream 1. Her work involves developing and testing real-time auditing tools to measure the appropriateness and performance of humanitarian public health and nutrition responses. 

Nada holds a Postgraduate Diploma and Master of Science in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and is a member of the Global Health Cluster’s Public Health Information Services Task Team. She is currently undertaking her PhD at LSHTM.

Nada is a founding member of the Sudan COVID-19 Research Group.

Rahaf is a pharmacist and a public health professional. Over the past 9 years, she has supported the implementation and development of various programmes and researches focusing on crisis-affected populations and humanitarian settings in Jordan, Lebanon and Sudan, Syria, and the UK. She has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the British Red Cross (BRC), Our Hearts with You Foundation (OHWY), King’s College London (KCL) and different community-led organisations, focusing on nutrition in emergencies, mental health, antibiotic resistance, Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV), education and COVID-19. She holds an MPH from the University of Leeds with the prestigious Chevening Scholarship Award from the UK Government.

In her current role at the LSHTM, Rahaf is supporting the community-led COVID-19 research and advocacy efforts in Sudan.

Abd Elhameed is a MSc student at the University of Kordofan Faculty of Science, a former teaching and research assistant at University of Kordofan, and has been a member of Y-PEER Sudan since 2016 and a trainer since 2018. He is the current president of the Youth Mechanism for Child Protection in North Kordofan that works in the areas of reproductive health, Gender Based Violence, FGM and child marriage. He is also a member of the Youth Strategic Awareness Foundation, and a researcher for the Carter Centre in North Kordofan.

Aljaili is a regional master trainer/instructional designer for Y-PEER in the Middle East and North Africa and is currently a MSc candidate in Sustainable Development at SOAS, University of London. He has extensive expertise in developing and implementing youth programs in several countries in the region, including how to incorporate young people’s inputs into policy and programming processes.

Isra a consultant for UNFPA in its current COVID-19 response and is a recent MSc graduate from the Development and Research Studies Institute at the University of Khartoum. Throughout her experience she has supported the implementation of different programs focused on women economic empowerment, BMI, protection and gender equality. With IFAD, Sudanese development call organisation NIDAA. She’s an advocate for youth participation and youth development and current supports Y-PEER engagement and capacity building programs in the area of research.

Nazik is a public health specialist, with over 10 years of working experience in public health practice and research in higher education, government sector and the World Health Organization. She holds a PhD in Community Dentistry from the University of Bergen (Norway), is a member of the Faculty of Public Health (Royal College of Physicians, UK) and Fellow of the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research Institute (USA). Nazik was able to branch out in her career from dental public health to the promotion and protection of general human health.

Reem has almost 15 years of experience across several countries as an ER clinician, public health policy researcher, lecturer, writer and filmmaker. She obtained her MPH from University of Liverpool and has consulted for several entities including the WHO country office in Khartoum, the Transitional Sudanese Government and Federal Ministry of Health, GHD/EMPHNET and different health communication campaigns in the MENA region. 

Her experience includes knowledge translation in written and audiovisual form to promote health and citizen empowerment, and her research interests include social determinants of health, social justice, and advancing the role of women in political change. She writes for several platforms, has over 150 published blogs, articles and book contributions, has directed and researched for several documentary films and videos, and was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Moreland Foundation Scholarship awarded to published African writers. 

Salma is a public health professional and researcher from a medical background based in Sudan. She holds a MPhil in International Health from the University of Oslo, Norway and a MSc in Public and Tropical Health from the University of Medical Sciences and Technology in Sudan. Salma has more than 8 years of diverse research experience working on issues related to maternal and women health, HIV prevention, implementation of health projects and community-based interventions, policy making, and research with Sudan Federal Ministry of Health, national organizations, research institutions, and several UN agencies and NGOs. She is especially interested in qualitative research.

Sian has been designing, delivering and evaluating public health behaviour change programs throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific for more than a decade. For the last 5 years she has been researching behaviour change related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in humanitarian crises and outbreaks. She is the lead researcher on the Wash’Em Project which aims to improve hygiene programme design in emergencies and the founder and Response Lead for the COVID-19 Hygiene Hub  which is a free service to help actors in low- and middle-income countries rapidly share, design, and adapt evidence-based hygiene interventions to combat COVID-19. She is also currently involved in evaluations of a range of novel humanitarian interventions including the SuperTowel, the Jengu Handwashing Unity, the Oxfam Handwashing Stand and Oxfam’s Community Perception Tracker. Sian is particularly interested in programme design, qualitative and formative research methods, innovation processes, equity and inclusivity (with a focus on disability) and decision-making within the humanitarian sector.

Sian’s role within the Sudan COVID-19 Research Group is to support the translation of research insights into behaviour change programming and to aid in the development of research and monitoring tools.