Professor Andy Tatem
Our Director, Andy Tatem completed his PhD within the Department of Electronics at the University of Southampton UK, developing approaches for sub-pixel land cover mapping from satellite imagery. In 2002 he took up a position as a Research Officer at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford UK, developing demographic and disease datasets, and spending time in Nairobi working with the Kenya Medical Research Institute on initiating the Malaria Atlas Project. In 2009 he moved to a faculty position at the Emerging Pathogens Institute and Department of Geography at the University of Florida, where he initiated WorldPop, as well as undertaking work on population mobility and its implications for malaria transmission and elimination. In 2013 he moved back to the University of Southampton as a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment. He has always been interested in how populations, their characteristics and their dynamics can be mapped at high resolution across low and middle-income countries. His recent research has led to pioneering approaches to the use and integration of satellite, survey, cell phone and census data to map the distributions and movement patterns of vulnerable populations for disease, disaster and development applications. He runs international collaborations with national governments, UN agencies and data providers, and leads multiple research and operational projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, GAVI, Clinton Health Access Initiative and others. He has authored more than 300 publications that have been cited over 40,000 times, and is the recipient of awards from the Royal Geographical Society, Academy of Social Sciences and the UN.
