Alex COOK

Dr Alex Cook is a Professor and Vice Dean of Global Health at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Since joining the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2008, he has held several joint appointments across the ecosystem, including the Duke-NUS Medical School, the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and the Department of Statistics and Data Science.

He works on infectious disease modelling and statistics, including dengue, COVID-19, influenza and other respiratory pathogens, and on population modelling to assess the effect of evolving demographics on non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. His team’s work—which has appeared in the national and international media, including the Straits Times, the Sunday Times, the Lianhe Zaobao, New Paper, Today, Reuters, Agence-France Presse, France 24, the Times of India, and Sky News—is often in close collaboration with government agencies, including in Singapore the Ministry of Health, the National Environment Agency, the Health Promotion Board and the Ministry of Defence, as well as with overseas partners.

Examples of the contribution of his work to national policy making include:

• His team’s projections of the future burden of diabetes in Singapore was cited in the Committee of Supply as the Minister of Health declared ‘war’ on diabetes;
• His team’s evaluation of the impact of school closure on hand, foot and mouth disease transmission support’s the government’s relaxation of the policy;
• His close collaboration with the National Environment Agency has led to the development of a realtime dengue forecasting algorithm that is routinely used as part of Singapore’s vector control programme.

His team’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide technical advice to the government earned them the award of the President’s Certificate of Commendation, while he won the Pingat Pentadbiran Awam (Perak) (COVID-19) and the COVID-19 Resilience Medal from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Award for research from the National University Health System.

In addition to his research, Dr Cook has won several awards for his teaching, including two faculty teaching awards from the Faculty of Science, one from the NUS Public Health, and one from the university.

• Professor, NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (Primary)
• Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School
• Professor, NUS Department of Statistics and Data Science
• Professor, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

• Infectious disease modelling
• Chronic disease modelling
• Health economic and policy modelling
• Biostatistics
• Global Health

• Biostatistics
• Modelling

• PhD Statistics (Heriot-Watt University, UK, for research at Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland)
• BSc (hons) 1st class in Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, UK

• 2009 Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Faculty of Science, NUS
• 2011 Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Faculty of Science, NUS
• 2013 Inspiring Research Mentor Award, NUS High School of Mathematics and Science
• 2014 Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS and National University Health System
• 2014 Annual Teaching Excellence Award, NUS
• 2021 Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Award
• 2023 Pingat Pentadbiran Awam (Perak) (COVID-19)
• 2023 COVID-19 Resilience Medal
• 2025 Pingat Pentadbiran Awam (Gangsa)

• 2005-2008: Postdoctoral research associate, Heriot-Watt University, UK and Visiting scholar, University of Cambridge, UK
• 2013-2015: Assistant Professor, Yale-NUS College, NUS
• 2008-2015: Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, NUS
• 2011-2015: Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore
• 2011-2015: Assistant Professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS
• 2015 to 2023: Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, NUS and Duke-NUS Medical School and Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

• Vice Dean (Global Health) NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health

• Hou W, Zhou Y, Luo W, Wang L, Kwan MP, Cook AR, Mapping environmental suitability changes for arbovirus mosquitoes in Southeast Asia: 1960–2020 (2024), iScience, 27:110498.
• Jin S, Tay M, Ng LC, Wong JCC, Cook AR, Combining wastewater surveillance and case data in estimating the time-varying effective reproduction number (2024), Science of the Total Environment, 928:172469.
• Jit M, Cook AR, Informing Public Health Policies with Models for Disease Burden, Impact Evaluation, and Economic Evaluation (2024), Annual Review of Public Health, 45:133-150.
• Ang IYH, Wang Y, Tyagi S, Koh GCH, Cook AR, Preferences and willingness-to-pay for a blood pressure telemonitoring program using a discrete choice experiment (2023), Npj Digital Medicine, 6:188.
• Jin S, BL Dickens, JT Lim, Cook AR, EpiMix: A novel method to estimate effective reproduction number (2023), Infectious Disease Modelling, 8:704-716.
• Jin S, Lim JT, Dickens BL, Cook AR, The impact of earlier reopening to travel in the Western Pacific on SARS-CoV-2 transmission (2023), IJID Regions, 6:135-141.
• Fernandez SA, Sun H, Dickens BL, Ng LC, Cook AR, Lim JT, Features of the urban environment associated with Aedes aegypti abundance in high-rise public apartments in Singapore: An environmental case-control study (2023), Plos Neglected Tropical Diseases, 17:e0011075.
• Tan RKJ, Cook AR, Singapore’s HIV disclosure law in the context of progress towards the 90-90-90 goals: A call for greater action in the Western Pacific (2022), Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific, 29:100588.
• Jin S, Dickens BL, Quek AM, Hartman M, Tambyah PA, Seet RCS, Cook AR, Estimating transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 at different intraspatial levels in an institutional outbreak (2022), Epidemics, 40:100617.
• Jin S, Dickens BL, Lim JT, Cook AR, EpiRegress: A Method to Estimate and Predict the Time-Varying Effective Reproduction Number (2022), Viruses, 14:1576.
• Koo JR, Cook AR, Lim JT, Tan KW, Dickens BL, Modelling the Impact of Mass Testing to Transition from Pandemic Mitigation to Endemic COVID-19 (2022), Viruses, 14:967.
• Park M, Tan KB, Vasoo S, Dickens BL, Lye D, Cook AR, Estimated Health Outcomes and Costs Associated With Use of Monoclonal Antibodies for Prevention or Mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 Infections (2022), JAMA Network Open, 5:e225750.
• Zeng Z, Cook AR, Chen JIP, van der Eijk Y, Evaluating the public health impact of partial and full tobacco flavour bans: A simulation study (2022), Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific, 21:100414.
• Sun H, Koo J, Dickens BL, Clapham HE, Cook AR, Short-term and long-term epidemiological impacts of sustained vector control in various dengue endemic settings: A modelling study (2022), Plos Computational Biology, 18:e1009979.
• Mao Y, Tan KXQ, Seng A, Wong P, Toh SA, Cook AR, Stratification of Patients with Diabetes Using Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles and Machine Learning (2022), Health Data Science, 2022:9892340.

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