Speakers
Dr. Rami H. Al-Rifai PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Epidemiologist at the Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University. Dr. Al-Rifai gained broad expertise in epidemiological studies and systematic reviews and meta-analyses assessing the burden of and identify factors associated with and risk factors of various health outcomes. Dr. Al-Rifai, involved in different observational (cohort and cross-sectional) epidemiological studies on communicable and non-communicable diseases that related to maternal and child health, occupational health, sexually transmitted infections, and parasitic infections. To generate knowledge and inform policy-makers. Dr. Al-Rifai, utilizes primary data collected in field surveys as well as secondary data published in original peer-review studies, to generate summary estimates using systematic reviews and meta-analyses methodology.
Dr. Al-Rifai, collaborates with many researchers at local, regional, and international level with several solo-authored, first-authored, and co-authored peer-reviewed published studies including systematic reviews and meta-analyses studies.
Ms. Linda Östlundh is the Director for the National Medical Library at UAE University (UAEU) in Al Ain. She has over 20 years of experience from academic and medical libraries at institutions including Weill Cornell Medicine in Doha, Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and universities in Sweden and Norway. In addition to library management, Ms. Östlundh’ s professional focus includes information retrieval and information literacy instruction as well as research support for students, faculty, medical and health practitioners and researchers. She is also one of the co-authors of the best-selling research methodology book for Bachelor and Master students: “Time for Research”, used in health science educations all over Scandinavia.
Ms. Östlundh has extensive experience from participating in national and international research projects such as systematic review and meta-analysis collaborations with research teams in Australia, China, UK, UAE, Tanzania, US, etc. She has established systematic review services at her current and previous institution and is co-authoring papers in high impact peer reviewed medical journals. Her academic professional experience also includes consultant work, teaching and mentoring Master students and librarians at libraries, universities and library schools in Egypt, Sweden and Norway.
Dr. Abderrahim Oulhaj is an Associate Professor in Biostatistics at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University. He holds a PhD in biostatistics from the UCL University in Belgium. Before joining the UAE, he worked as a senior medical biostatistician at the University of Oxford for almost 10 years. He was the lead medical biostatistician for the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing cohort study (OPTIMA) and for the EXCEL study at the Diabetes trial Unit, University of Oxford. Dr. Abderrahim Oulhaj divides his time in teaching undergraduate and graduate programs at the UAEU, supervising PhDs and Master students and working on many research activities as well as consulting with healthcare professionals. He received many awards from the UAE University for publishing in top peer-reviewed scientific journals and bringing recognition to the United Arab Emirates University. His research field is the statistical modelling in medical field especially Diabetes, cardio-vascular and Alzheimer’s diseases. He established very strong collaborations with many international Universities including the University of Oxford (UK), the UCL University (Belgium), Graz medical school (Austria) and University of Oslo (Norway).