Niko Speybroeck
Program Director
Professor of Quantitative Epidemiology (research interests in the areas of epidemiology, biostatistics, spatio-temporal analysis, mathematical models, surveillance systems, epidemics)
Regina Below
Database Manager, Documentalist
Regina is a Database Manager and Documentalist at CRED, where she has been working for over 30 years. As technical support staff, she is involved in different activities at the centre and is in charge of the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT).
Elena Briones Alonso
Postdoctoral researcher, Project Coordinator
Elena is an agri-food and development economist turned transdisciplinary sustainability researcher. She has broad experience doing research in academia, for (inter)national policy actors, and with boots-on-the-ground practitioners - using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Elena obtained her PhD in Economics at the KU Leuven in 2017 on the intersection between culture and economics, and has done research (consultancy) on a diversity of themes related to sustainable development and the just transition. Today, she is especially interested in food security and food system transitions; ecosystem governance; climate change adaptation; and inclusive sustainable development governance.
Nicolas Conserva
PhD Student
Nicolas is an environmental biologist specializing in integrated health risk management. His research interests include the epidemiology of infectious diseases, especially neglected tropical diseases, public health, participatory and community-based methods, ecology, and the One Health framework. He is currently pursuing a PhD focused on tropical diseases in Brazil.
Damien Delforge
Research Associate
Damien Delforge began his research career in 2013 at the Earth and Life Institute (ELI, UCLouvain), where he worked on hydrology and flood risk management. He completed a Ph.D. from 2017 to 2020 at UCLouvain and the Seismology and Gravimetry department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), specializing in machine learning tools and causal analysis of data. In 2021, Damien joined the CRED team to work on developing the EM-DAT database.
Margo Tonnelier
PhD Student
Margo Tonnelier holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from UCLouvain. She is in charge of epidemic-related activities of EM-DAT project and she studies the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) following disasters.
Valentin Wathelet
Database Development, Main Attaché
Valentin holds a Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences (Clinical Biomedical Sciences Specialization) from the Université catholique de Louvain. Interested in software and database development, his work focuses on the EM-DAT database and its usability. He started the development of the new EM-DAT public portal, working now part time on the project.
Scientific Collaborators
Periklis Charalampous
Scientific Collaborator
Periklis Charalampous holds PhD in Public Health Epidemiology from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His key research interests include summary measures of population health, epidemiological methods, and systematic reviews. In 2024, Periklis joined the CRED team to work on burden of disease assessments.
Hieu Truong
Scientific Collaborator
Hieu Truong is an epidemiologist and researcher specialized in vaccine-preventable diseases, with a focus on pneumococcal infections in children. He recently completed his PhD in Public Health at UCLouvain, Belgium, and has more than six years of experience at the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he worked in infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response for measles, COVID-19, diphtheria, and other public health threats across southern Vietnam. His research integrates epidemiology, clinical features, and vaccine effectiveness to inform public health policy in low- and middle-income countries.