Our Research Unit in Applied Epidemiology and Biostatistics is supporting the study planning and is leading data analyses of the department’s research projects, which mostly focus on the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases of public health importance. Main topics include, but are not limited to: maternal, neonatal and child health; statistics and epidemiology; diagnostics and vaccines; integrated One Health-surveillance of antimicrobial resistance; molecular epidemiology; and modelling.

Research methods include ecological and cross-sectional studies of infectious disease dynamics in different populations, observational case-control and cohort studies to define risk factors for disease in both hospital and community settings, randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of individual- and community-level interventions, and mathematical models to project the impact of public health interventions. Beyond that, our group is engaged in the development and application of statistical methods to adjust for methodological challenges arising in resource-poor settings, e.g., accounting for a particular selection bias or developing suitable randomization strategies for cluster-randomized trials. 

The Data Management is supporting epidemiological studies and clinical trials from the department in accordance with good scientific practice in each step of the data lifecycle.

We supervise various bachelor, master, medical doctoral and PhD students, and apply on-the-job training to support junior researchers in their projects.