Alba Amaya-Burns, MD, MSc, worked as Associate Professor of Global Health at Duke Kunshan University, and Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University (06/2014-06/2017). An experienced public health leader, and educator, Dr. Amaya-Burns has applied her knowledge of global health practice to large scale health promotion efforts in Latin America, the United States, and currently in China. This included a successful infectious diseases program in El Salvador (USAID’s $9 million portfolio + $27 million from the Global Fund, as key member of El Salvador’s Country Coordinating Mechanism, 01/2000-12/2004). She has focused her attention on reducing health disparities in Latin America, the United States, and globally, by training future health professionals, health workers and faculty from high, low and middle income countries, in the areas of global health (cross-cutting health challenges). She is currently working in the most disadvantaged regions of El Salvador, and mentoring graduate students from Duke Kunshan University and Columbia University. She also is a member of the International Organization of Migration / World Health Organization (IOM/WHO) Scientific Committee of the Global Consultation on Migration Health, and member of the International Society of Bioethics. She has received a number of awards, including the Induction into the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health (USA, 2011). Between 2009 and 2014 she served as a member of the University of Florida’s College of Public Health Faculty Excellence Committee. She also earned several awards from the Universidad de El Salvador, the City of Los Angeles, CA, and USAID. Dr. Amaya-Burns is a medical doctor (M.D.) by training (Universidad Nacional de Nicaragua and Universidad de El Salvador), and earned her MSc. in Clinical Tropical Medicine from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London University. She currently works as Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health at Duke Kunshan University, and as Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Florida.

Allan Burns is an applied anthropologist who has carried out research on in Mayan communities of Central America, among American Indian tribes, and with Pacific Islanders. He has collaborated with medical researchers on health disparity research among glaucoma patients, stroke patients, immigrants from Mexico and Central America. He has a long standing interest and research in tobacco use initiation and community based participatory research. He has served on technical committees of the International Organization of Migration, the Pan American Health Organization on indigenous people and infectious diseases, and as a consultant to several Latin American Universities on the implementation of intercultural education. He has led international trips and research projects for students of anthropology, medicine, dentistry, public health, and pharmacy. He serves as an expert witness on human rights cases in U.S. federal courts. He is past president of the Society for Applied Anthropology and has received the Sol Tax Career Award of that society. He has also been awarded four teacher of the year awards from the University of Florida, and five awards for mentoring minority Ph.D. students from the State of Florida. He has held administrative positions as director of Fulbright Programs, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Senior Associate Dean, and Honors Program Prestigious Scholarships advisor at the University of Florida. He has also been a Fulbright scholar at Copenhagen University, visiting faculty at the Autonomous University of the Yucatan in Mexico, and exchange scholar at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. He held the du Pont/Magid Endowed Chair position at the University of Florida where he continues as Professor Emeritus. Burns has taught at Duke Kunshan University since it began in 2014. He teaches medical anthropology in the Global Learning Program and “Culture, Health, and Illness in Global Perspective” in the Masters of Global Health program.

Chang Liu, PhD, is Managing Director for ACCESS Health Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is responsible for the health and aging innovation platforms and leads the research and consulting work for the region. Chang Liu has authored a number of publications, including the Singapore overview for the International Profiles of Health Care Systems from 2017, published by The Commonwealth Fund and London School of Economics, and the epilogue to Affordable Excellence, which documents progress toward sustainable high quality healthcare in Singapore. He is currently working with Dr. William Haseltine on another book about Singapore, A City for All Ages, on how the city state is managing a rapidly aging population. In addition to his work with ACCESS Health, Chang Liu is also adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Duke Kunshan University. Previously, he was assistant professor in Health Services and Systems Research at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and the Center for Ageing and Education at Duke-NUS. He also worked at the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at Brown University, where he studied long term care and elder care policies in both the United States and China. He earned his PhD in Health Services Research from Brown University with a specialization in health economics. He was awarded the eXebs Friedrich J.Schoening International Scholarship and was named an eXebs Fellow during his exchange study at the European Business School, Germany. He also received a Master’s degree in Finance (2009) from the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University, China.

Dr. Xiaoyun Liu is currently a professor in Health System Research and deputy director at Peking University China Center for Health development Studies. His research interests focus on health system and health policy, especially in relation to health financing and health human resources in China and other developing countries. For about 20 years, Dr Liu has been working on research projects in the areas of health financing, health policy in China, Vietnam and India, funded by EU, DFID, WHO and other agencies. He obtained his first degree on public health in Shanghai Medical University in 1998, and then in 2003 completed his PhD of Management from Fudan University, Shanghai. Dr. Liu worked as a lecturer on social medicine and health statistics in Fudan University from 2003 to 2006, and then a lecturer in health services research at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine from 2006 to 2010, before joining Peking University in 2010.

Hanzhang Xu, PhD, RN is an Assistant Professor at Duke University with a joint appointment in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and School of Nursing. She is also a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, a Faculty Affiliate at the Duke Global Health Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke Kunshan University. As a geriatric nursing scientist and a health services researcher, her program of research falls under two themes: (i) addressing health disparities in cognitive aging among older adults from a global perspective; and (ii) integrating patient-reported factors to promote outcomes in older adults with cardiovascular disease. She is also interested in using digital technology to promote disease management in older patients with chronic disease. Currently Dr. Xu is the Principal Investigator on multiple projects funded by the National Institute of Health and the American Heart Association. These research projects leverage the strengths of electronic health records (EHR), Medicare claims, and national and international survey data to improve the cardiovascular and brain health of older adults through a lens of equity. Her ongoing work in these areas is exemplified with more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals in nursing, gerontology, and cardiovascular research. These studies have received extensive international media coverage, including in TIME, Forbes, and WebMD. In the past few years, she has also received several awards and honors such as the Huffman Splane Emerging Nurse Scholar and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) AGING Initiative Multiple Chronic Conditions Scholar.

Dr. John Ji is an Associate Professor at Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Global Health Research Center at Duke Kunshan University. He received his bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University and his doctoral degree in environmental epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. John has worked with large observational cohort studies on environmental determinants (heavy metals, air pollution, green space) of mortality and morbidities. He has used biomarkers and remote sensing for environmental exposure assessment. He has published in The Lancet Planetary Health, International Journal of Epidemiology, and Environmental Health Perspectives. He is currently interested in climate change and health, aging, and brain health.

Dr. Weixi Jiang is currently a Youth Research Associate in the Department of Health Economics, School of Public Health, Fudan University. She obtained her Ph.D degree in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Amsterdam in 2021. Prior to joining Fudan, she was a research analyst at the Global Health Research Center of Duke Kunshan University. Dr. Weixi Jiang’s current research examines health system, health policy and intervention through a mixed-method approach, especially in the area of infectious disease control, healthcare financing and payment, and evidence-based traditional Chinese medicine.

Dr Jinkou (Button) Zhao is a senior specialist for evaluation and impact at the Global Fund. He has extensive experiences in the field of nutrition, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases as a range of professional roles from a junior epidemiologist to Department Director at Jiangsu provincial CDC, to a Chief for Strategic Information at U.S. CDC, a senior advisor at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a senior technical expert at the Global Fund over the past 36 years. Dr Zhao was trained as a physician, with a MSc in epidemiology and biostatistics, and a PhD in epidemiology. He teaches epidemiology at Nanjing Medical University, Wageningen University in the Netherland, University of Geneva in Switzerland and Oxford University in UK. He supervised more than 20 Masters or PhD students and published more than 260 articles including more than 100 on peer-reviewed journals.