Simon I. Hay is Director of Research Strategy at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington. Trained in zoology at Bristol and in epidemiology at Oxford, he spent the first half of his career mapping infectious diseases, malaria above all, across Africa and Asia. He now sets the strategic direction of IHME's research and oversees the quality of the Global Burden of Disease study's highest-profile publications. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a past President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the author of more than seven hundred peer-reviewed papers.

Dr. Christian Razo, MSc, PhD, is an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine and at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Her work centers on risk factors for non-communicable diseases, including high systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, high fasting plasma glucose, and other cardiometabolic risks. She also studies how risk exposures shape women’s health, particularly maternal and neonatal outcomes, including the role of sexually transmitted infections. Originally from Mexico, she earned her PhD in Population Nutrition Sciences at the School of Public Health of Mexico and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at IHME on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study. Before IHME, she was a research scientist at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, where she conducted country-level burden of disease studies. She now coordinates the Regional Network for Establishing Health Priorities in the 21st Century: Latin America and the Caribbean, which disseminates GBD findings and trains academics and policymakers across the region.

Sam Ostroff, PhD, is a scientific writer at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and an affiliate faculty member in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He has a decade of experience in research communication and is particularly interested in how evidence shapes health policy. At IHME, he partners with Global Burden of Disease (GBD) research teams to translate complex scientific findings into clear, accessible publications that help decision-makers improve population health. He has co-authored GBD studies in leading journals, including The Lancet and Nature Medicine. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Columbia University, and a BA from Bucknell University, and has studied business administration at the University of Washington Foster School of Business. An avid reader and sports fan, he lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Marie Ng, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, and an Affiliate Associate Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington.  

Dr. Ng is a widely published global health researcher and a long-standing contributor to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study, with work appearing in The Lancet, Nature Medicine, JAMA, and other leading journals. Her research spans the full breadth of the GBD portfolio, from non-communicable disease, risk factors to infectious diseases, with an emphasis on translating complex quantitative finding into interpretable evidence for policy.

In 2025, she led the launch of a dedicated series of ASEAN-focused publications in The Lancet Public Health, documenting the burden of cardiovascular diseases, mental disorders, smoking, and injuries across ASEAN member states. The series continues with GBD 2023 analyses of causes of death and adolescent health in the region, establishing a sustained program of regional burden-of-disease research anchored at NUS.