Patricia A. Cassano, PhD is the Alan D. Mathios Professor of epidemiology and nutrition in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University, professor of healthcare policy and research at the Weill Cornell Medical College, and director of graduate studies for the graduate field of epidemiology in the Cornell University Graduate School. Dr. Cassano serves as director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Nutrition Research for Health at Cornell, as Director of the Cochrane US Network Associate Center at Cornell University, and as co-Director of the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health at Cornell. Dr. Cassano directs the Summer Institute and works closely with the faculty listed below who represent Cochrane, the WHO, and Cornell University.

Luis Gabriel Cuervo is Senior Advisor Research for Health at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). Formerly as Senior Clinical Editor at BMJ Knowledge, he helped develop and expand the international reach of BMJ’s Clinical Evidence. He also developed an evidence-based methodology to address discrepancies in recommendations among UN agencies, leading to the 2006 Interagency List of Essential Medicines for Reproductive Health (WHO, IPPF, John Snow Inc, PATH, PSI, UNFPA, World Bank). Dr Cuervo has been a contributor since 1994 to the Cochrane Collaboration, spearheading it in Colombia. His education includes degrees as an MD, a Specialist in Family Medicine, and an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics. From PAHO, Dr. Cuervo has coordinated the development, monitoring, and implementation of policies on research for health, of knowledge translation platforms to strengthen health systems and initiatives to show the value of research for health as a driver of development.

Julia Finkelstein, ScD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Dr. Finkelstein is Deputy Director of the affiliate Cochrane Centre for Nutrition and Associate Director of the World Health Organization | Pan American Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Nutrition Research for Health. Dr. Finkelstein serves as the co-Director of the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health at Cornell. She is also an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medical College, and adjunct Associate Professor at St. John's Research Institute, St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore, India. She received her Bachelor of Science from McGill University, Master of Public Health degree from Brown University, and Master and Doctor of Science degrees in Epidemiology and Nutrition from Harvard University. 

Damian Francis is a Nutritionist and Epidemiologist who is currently an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Georgia College and State University. He is a 2010 Emerging Leader of the Americas Programme (ELAP) scholar, awarded by the Canadian Bureau of International Education. As an ELAP scholar, he completed a research fellowship at the University of Ottawa in knowledge synthesis and knowledge translation. Dr Francis is founder of the Cochrane Caribbean and currently serves as Co-Director. He serves both the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization (WHO) as a member of the Essential Medicine List expert panel. Dr. Francis enjoys teaching translational research and occasionally bingeing on data analysis of survey data, using STATA no less. Dr Francis has a track record of excellence in research scholarship which has focused on the epidemiology of chronic non-communicable diseases among people of Afro-Caribbean heritage with emphasis on health equity/disparities and public health nutrition.

Lee Hooper has been an editor for the Cochrane Heart Group for 14 years, was an editor of the Cochrane Oral Health Group for 5 years, and regularly referees systematic reviews for top medical and nutrition journals. Dr. Hooper is a member of the World Health Organization Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) on Diet and Health, which has recently produced guidance on sodium and potassium intakes. As well as being a Cochrane editor, she is an editor of Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, was awarded Ibex Award by British Dietetic Association (2005) and was a member of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Partners Council. Dr. Hooper is a Reader in Research Synthesis, Nutrition & Hydration in the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia and has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, mainly in the areas of dehydration and nutrition of older people and the effects of dietary change on health.

Saurabh Mehta, MBBS, ScD is the Janet and Gordon Lankton Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Dr. Mehta is the Founding Director of the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. He is also the co-director of the NIH-funded Center for Point of Care Diagnostics for Nutrition, Infection, and Cancer (PORTENT) as part of the POCTRN+ network. Dr. Mehta is the program director of the NIH-supported training program on artificial intelligence and precision nutrition. He also co-leads the Research Coordinating Center for the NIH’s Nutrition for Precision Health Initiative and directs the Program in International Nutrition at Cornell. The central theme of his research is the interplay between nutrition and disease, including facilitating field-friendly assessment for both and elucidating how nutrition can be used as a modifiable risk factor to improve health and associated outcomes, often in the context of pregnancy and early childhood. This is achieved through a combination of active surveillance programs, the invention of point-of-care diagnostics, and randomized controlled trials primarily in India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

Jordi Pardo Pardo joined the Centre for Global Health, University of Ottawa in 2009. Jordi was trained as a journalist, but early in his career he started working on health research in the Iberoamerican Cochrane Centre in Barcelona, where he is from. Jordi has been involved in the establishment and expansion of the Cochrane Collaboration in Latin America working in training and knowledge translation projects. Jordi had a major role on the launch of the Spanish version of The Cochrane Library (la Biblioteca Cochrane Plus). Jordi is currently the co-chair of the Executive of Managing Editors at Cochrane, and elected member of the Cochrane Governing Board. On his four days a week at the Centre for Global Health, Jordi contributes as one of the Managing Editors of the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group and supporting the activities of the Equity Methods Group.

Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas works in the Division of Universal Health Coverage/ Healthier Populations at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. He leads the development of normative work and supports the implementation of integrated-health services to support universal health coverage and healthier populations. This work focuses on health promotion, prevention and treatment of conditions requiring nutrition actions throughout the life course and reduction of risk factors and other determinants of health for greater impact at country level. He leads a multidisciplinary agile team on mainstreaming nutrition in primary health care settings for universal health coverage, one of the pillars of WHO 13 General Programme of Work. He is an appointed member of the WHO 3-level Joint Working Group on Universal Health Coverage since 2018. He is Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at Emory University in Atlanta, USA since 2011 and Professor (Courtesy) in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA since October 2017. JP worked as a Specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA and was involved in planning, implementing, and reporting of health and nutrition surveillance systems to inform policy. He provided specialized-technical assistance in long-term health projects in Uzbekistan, Morocco, Egypt, Peru, Nicaragua, Georgia and Dominican Republic. In the private sector, JP worked for a multinational food company, in leadership scientific and regulatory positions at the regional level in the Latin America and the Caribbean Headquarters in Mexico and its eight country subsidiaries. He worked in various public-private partnerships in this role.

Lynn Johnson, PhD is the director of the Cornell Statistical Consulting Unit (CSCU). has a Ph.D. in statistics from Cornell University and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado in biometry and mathematics. Before pursuing her doctoral degree, Lynn held positions as a statistical analyst with the Continuing Improvement in Cardiac Surgery Program with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Denver, Colorado, and as a statistical assistant with the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her interests range from statistical methodology to statistical applications in epidemiology, nutrition, environmental science, and the social sciences. She has methodological publications in statistical journals such as Biometrika and Statistics in Medicine and applied publications in a diverse variety of journals including The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, and Environmental and Experimental Biology. She has more than 10 years of experience in providing statistical consulting at Cornell University to researchers from a broad range of fields.

Vivian Welch, PhD, MSc, BSc is Dr. Vivian Welch is Editor in Chief of the Campbell Collaboration, director of the Methods Centre at the Bruyère Research Institute, and Associate Professor at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Vivian's research interests include evidence synthesis and exchange related to global health, health equity, and healthy aging in partnership with relevant stakeholders, including members of the public, practitioners, and decision-makers. Dr. Welch is a co-convenor of the Campbell and Cochrane Equity Methods Group and the Cochrane Agenda Setting and Priority Setting group and co-director of Cochrane-Campbell Global Ageing. She leads the GRADE Working Group on considering health equity in guideline development. She co-convenes the Campbell and Cochrane Equity Methods Group and is a co-director of Cochrane-Campbell Global Ageing. Dr. Welch obtained her PhD in Population health and epidemiology from the University of Ottawa in 2010. Vivian’s research interests include methods for reporting and conducting systematic reviews relevant to aging and health equity. She has led international teams in the development of reporting guidelines for how to assess health equity in systematic reviews (PRISMA-Equity 2012), randomized controlled trials (CONSORT-Equity 2017), and public health guidelines. She has led and contributed to over 30 systematic reviews on global health. She led a new chapter on assessing health equity in the revised Cochrane Handbook, published in 2019. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers on systematic review methods and health equity and led 33 research grants as a principal investigator or co-principal investigator (total funding US$2,727,137). She was recognized as one of the top 100 women in Global Health 2018, The Lancet, and Canadian Society for International Health, and received an Ontario Early Researcher Award 2014-2019.

Toby Lasserson has been Deputy Editor in Chief of The Cochrane Library since 2019. He leads a team who commission and develop systematic reviews and provides methodological advice and guidance to systematic review teams prior to submission to Cochrane’s Editorial Service. Toby has been involved in Cochrane since 1999, when he worked in one of the review groups which oversaw production of reviews in asthma and chronic lung disease. He has since delivered training to Cochrane authors and been involved in the development of Cochrane’s standards for conduct and reporting, as well as ‘PRISMA’ extensions for Harms, Abstracts, Individual Participant Data, Protocols, and Living Systematic Reviews. He provides input on Cochrane’s dissemination activity for its published reviews.

Christian Miller is a librarian and lecturer in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Prior to coming to Cornell, he was a medical librarian at the University of Maryland Medical School and then the National Cancer Institute where he was first involved in systematic reviews. Since joining Cornell, he has become a member of the Cornell Library’s Evidence Synthesis Team allowing him to provide consultation to and collaboration with project teams from a wide variety of disciplines. His expertise in the methodology behind evidence syntheses has led to publications of protocols and papers in a wide range of sources – from BMJ Open to the Journal of Black Studies.

Elizabeth Centeno-Tablante is a Lecturer in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She is developing research projects in Ecuador focusing on maternal and child health and the intersection between nutrition, inflammation, and infectious diseases. Additionally, Elizabeth is conducting systematic reviews to assess the potential transmission of infectious diseases through breastfeeding and contribute to the development of evidence-based public health guidelines. Elizabeth is a Teaching Fellow for the Summer Institute contributing to the organization and preparation of training materials.