Sian Clarke

Professor Sian Clarke is a leading epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she serves in the Department of Disease Control within the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases. She has been instrumental in advancing malaria control strategies in low-income countries, particularly focusing on school-aged children in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research has directly influenced WHO recommendations, especially regarding intermittent preventive treatment in schools.

Professor Clarke holds several leadership positions including being the LSHTM Programme Director of the MSc One Health and LSHTM Co-Director of the OneZoo Centre for Doctoral Training, a multi-university PhD program addressing environmental drivers of zoonoses. From 2017-2021, she served as Co-Director of the LSHTM Malaria Centre, a network of over 200 malaria researchers. Her academic career at LSHTM has progressed steadily from Lecturer (2002-2008), to Associate Professor (2008-2018), to her current position as Professor in Epidemiology and Global Health (2018-present).

Her research program encompasses infectious disease epidemiology with a focus on malaria control strategies in resource-constrained environments. She has conducted numerous intervention studies in sub-Saharan Africa, including randomized controlled trials on malaria control in schools, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), perennial malaria chemoprevention (PMC), malaria prevention during pregnancy, and the use of malaria rapid diagnostic tests by community health workers. Her work has drawn attention to the previously overlooked area of malaria in school-aged children, demonstrating the impact of intermittent preventive treatment in schools (IPTs) on Plasmodium infection, anaemia, and cognitive function.

Professor Clarke's recent publications reveal an expanding research portfolio that integrates malaria control with nutrition, education outcomes, and a One Health approach to antimicrobial resistance. Her work increasingly examines the medicines retail sector, access to quality medicines, and the role of private providers within health systems, particularly during public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic.

She is a strong advocate for interdisciplinary research, bringing together insights from multiple disciplines to address pressing public health challenges. Her work spans multiple countries including The Gambia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Uganda, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Thailand, Benin, and Mozambique.

As an educator, Professor Clarke has been the academic coordinator of the MSc module on 'Epidemiology and Control of Malaria' at LSHTM and teaches across several MSc programs including Public Health in Developing Countries, Control of Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology (distance learning), Infectious Diseases (distance learning), and the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.