Members

Current PERSyst members:

  • Celina Borges Migliavaca (co-chair of PERSyst) is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is a systematic review methodologist with experience in conducting systematic reviews, including systematic reviews of prevalence.
  • Dr. Cinara Stein is a physiotherapist and holds a PhD in Health Sciences from the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil. She has experience conducting systematic reviews, including prevalence systematic reviews, and developing clinical practice guidelines.
  • Diana Buitrago Garcia is PhD candidate at the Institute for Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She has an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology from the National University of Colombia. She has worked with the Cochrane Collaboration Network, the Cochrane Iberoamerican Center and Cochrane Colombia. Her work has focused on developing systematic reviews in different topics and recently in the methods for developing systematic reviews of prevalence studies.
  • Gabrielle Nunes Escher is a medical student at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is undergraduate research student at the Brazilian National Institute of HTA (IATS/UFRGS). She has experience conducting systematic reviews, including prevalence systematic reviews.
  • Prof. Georgia Salanti is an associate professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She has served as convenor of Cochrane Statistical Methods and was president of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. She has been working in the field of evidence synthesis for over 15 years and has published more than 200 articles in methods and applications of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which have attracted more than 50,000 citations.
  • Prof. Julian Higgins is a Professor of Evidence Synthesis in the Population Health Sciences department of Bristol Medical School, England, where he leads the Bristol Appraisal and Review of Research (BARR) group. He is currently co-convenor of the Cochrane Bias Methods Group and has co-edited the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions since 2003. He is also co-author of the Wiley 2009 textbook “Introduction to Meta-analysis” and co-editor of the 2022 3rd edition of Wiley textbook “Systematic Reviews in Health Research: Meta-analysis in Context”. He was a member of the development teams for the original PRISMA reporting guideline for systematic reviews and meta-analyses and the STROBE-MR reporting guidelines for Mendelian randomization studies, and co-led development of the STREGA reporting guideline for genetic association studies. He has more than 300 publications, which have attracted more than 380,000 citations.
  • Prof. Maicon Falavigna is a clinical epidemiologist and health technology assessment, systematic review and clinical practice guideline developer and methodologist. He is assistant clinical professor (adjunct) at the Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact Department at McMaster University, Canada. He is a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of HTA (IATS/UFRGS) and former chair of PERSyst. He has more than 150 publications, which have attracted more than 8,000 citations.
  • Prof. Nicola Low is an infectious disease epidemiologist, professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She is the Deputy editor of Sexually Transmitted Infections and an Academic Editor for PLOS Medicine. She has conducted field studies of the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections and has led or contributed to systematic reviews of prevalence. She has more than 500 publications, which have attracted more than 48,000 citations.
  • Renata Garcia Ruschel is a physiotherapist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of HTA (IATS/UFRGS) with experience conducting studies of health technology assessment and value-based healthcare.
  • Dr. Timothy Hugh Barker (convenor of PERSyst) is a methodologist and clinical epidemiologist. He is a Research Fellow within Health Evidence Synthesis, Recommendations and Impact (HESRI), at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is current chair and co-founder of the RIPPER (Research Integrity and Predatory Publishing in Evidence Reviews) Working Group. He has experience in evidence synthesis, including systematic reviews, and is leading the re-development of JBI critical appraisal tools for assessment of risk of bias in different study designs.
  • Dr. Verônica Colpani is a physiotherapist with a PhD in Clinical Sciences at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She has experience conducting systematic reviews, including prevalence systematic reviews, and developing clinical practice guidelines.
  • Prof. Zachary Munn (co-chair of PERSyst) is a systematic review and guideline development methodologist with great experience in evidence synthesis. He is the Director of the Health Evidence Synthesis, Recommendations and Impact (HESRI) in the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide, Australia; Head of the Evidence Synthesis Taxonomy Initiative (ESTI); Chair of the Guidelines International Network (GIN) and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator. He led the development of several guidances for evidence synthesis, including the JBI critical appraisal tool for prevalence and the JBI manual for the conduction of prevalence systematic reviews. He has more than 280 publications, which have attracted more than 37,000 citations.
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