Laura Merson

Laura currently serves as Head of Data at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford.

Laura’s early career was spent in Canada, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, designing and implementing clinical trials in poverty-related diseases. In 2015, Laura co-launched and served 7 years as Associate Director of the IDDO research group at the University of Oxford, focusing on sharing research data to answer new questions to improve the treatment of infectious diseases.

Now, based at the University of Oxford as Head of Data for ISARIC, Laura works in partnership with the World Health Organization and the network of ISARIC collaborators building standards in data collection and analysis during outbreaks. Her research interests focus on changing the paradigm of public health emergency response by accelerating data collection, analysis, and evidence translation to improve the outcomes of patients with infectious diseases.