Welcoming New DICE Chair, Dr. Bouchra Nasri

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We are pleased to announce the appointment of Bouchra Nasri, Ph.D. as chair of PathCheck's Data Informatics Center for Epidemiology (DICE). As chair, Dr. Nasri will be focused on building DICE's data research to inform open source, digital solutions for public health response. 

"I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Nasri to the PathCheck team," said Graham Dodge, president of the PathCheck Foundation. "Her deep experience in modeling big data to track infectious disease and public health threats will be a tremendous asset as we continue our efforts towards making a meaningful impact in public health through data and open protocols."  

Dr. Nasri has been a proponent of community-based research. A profound researcher at the intersection of climate change, infectious disease, and public health, she recognized early on that modeling data to understand the behavior of society towards disease could result in better health outcomes and equity.

"Climate change and epidemiology are synonymous in our new global reality,” said Dr. Nasri. “Human behavior was a missing piece in my research to really understand the dynamics of diseases. When I began working with DICE and their teams of fellows looking at vaccine hesitancy, we were able to garner tangible results that can influence public health outcomes during public health threats. I am excited to continue this important work by leading DICE.”

Dr. Nasri and the team of DICE fellows analyzed data from several regions and countries looking at why vaccine hesitancy factors. They wanted to understand if trust in public health agencies is enough to adhere to different interventions during COVID-19. The results were on track with their original thinking and led the researchers to understand more about the perception of disease. These results have begun to inform how public health agencies can positively influence human behavior during a health crisis.  

As the Chair of DICE, Dr. Nasri plans to focus the center’s research on data, digital health, and global health threats. 

“Helping people to understand the context of data, how it can inform policy for more equitable outcomes, and what community-based approaches will work best will be our guiding principles,” said Dr. Nasri. “Digital health of the future requires sound data.”

Nasri is a faculty member of Biostatistics in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université de Montréal (Canada). She is an FRQS Junior 1 Scholar in Artificial Intelligence in Health and Digital Health and holds an NSERC Discovery Grant in Statistics for time series dependence modeling for complex data. Dr. Nasri and her team are working mainly on the development of statistical learning methods, artificial intelligence methods and mathematical models for infectious diseases and public health threats related to climate change. Dr. Nasri is a member of Mathematics for public health program run by the Fields Institute, a member of StatLab of the Centre de recherches mathématiques, and member of Centre de recherche en santé publique. Before joining Université de Montréal, Nasri completed a Post-doctoral fellowship in Statistics and applied probability at McGill University and HEC Montréal.