▎Cochrane Australia
Steve McDonald
Steve McDonald is co-director and senior information specialist at Cochrane Australia based at Monash University, Melbourne. He has extensive experience conducting evidence syntheses for Cochrane and several government agencies, including WHO and Australia’s NHMRC. His research interests include search strategy design, innovations to enhance the efficiency of study identification through automation, methods to support living systematic reviews and guidelines, and reporting of systematic reviews. He is the information specialist with the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration, working across several living guidelines, including those in stroke and pregnancy & postnatal care. He was part of the PRISMA 2020 group.
In 2024 he completed his PhD from Monash University, which explored new approaches for identifying evidence for living guidelines.
Steve was a co-lead on Project Transform, a three-year flagship health evidence project funded by NHMRC and Cochrane, that developed machine classifiers to improve the efficiency of study identification. He was an elected member of Cochrane's Board of Directors from 2008 to 2015, and previously managed Cochrane’s international training program.
Steve graduated in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1991. In addition to his PhD, he has a Masters in Information Science from Loughborough University and a Graduate Diploma in International Health from Monash University.
▎Cochrane Japan
Hisashi Noma
Dr. Noma is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, many of which have appeared in leading statistical and medical journals. He has made many contributions to statistical methods for clinical epidemiology involving research synthesis methods. Dr. Noma has also extensive applied research experience in clinical and epidemiological studies.
▎Cochrane Korea
Hyun Jung Kim
Professor Hyun Jung Kim is a distinguished Professor of Public Health at Korea University and a leading authority in evidence-based medicine (EBM) and clinical guideline development in South Korea.
She co-founded Cochrane Korea in 2009 and served as its co-director before assuming the role of director in 2023. Over the past decade, she has been instrumental in developing more than 50 clinical practice guidelines, offering critical methodological support to various medical societies in Korea.
Beyond academia, Professor Kim plays an active role in shaping national healthcare policy. She serves as an advisory member of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA) and as a clinical guideline specialist at the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences. She is also a founding member and academic director of the Korean Society of Evidence-Based Medicine, established in 2024.
Since 2015, she has been actively involved in launching and expanding the Choosing Wisely Campaign in Korea. Since 2020, she has provided methodological support for the development of the Choosing Wisely Korea Recommendations, working in collaboration with various Korean medical societies and the National Academy of Medicine of Korea to promote evidence-based, high-value care.
Professor Kim's contributions to evidence-based medicine have earned her commendations from the Minister of Health and Welfare in both 2016 and 2022. Recognized internationally, she was named among Elsevier’s World’s Top 2% Scientists.
A prolific researcher, she has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals. She earned her PhD in Public Health from Korea University in 2010.
▎Cochrane Singapore
Edwin Chan Shih-Yen
Dr Edwin Chan trained in veterinary medicine, molecular virology and genetic epidemiology. He has over twenty years of experience as a clinical epidemiologist and is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI), an Associate Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School and the Director of Cochrane Singapore. He has previously served as Deputy Director of the NMRC Clinical Trials and Epidemiology Research Unit, Head of Scientific Management during the setting up of the National Registry of Diseases Office, a statistical consultant to the Singapore Health Sciences Authority and trainer to the Singapore Ministry of Health on the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines (CPG). He currently oversees the Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Monitoring teams at SCRI as they collaborate with clinician-researchers in the design, execution, analysis and reporting of clinical trials and observational studies.
Besides being active in primary research and systematic reviews, he has taught and organized over three hundred post-graduate workshops and courses on clinical research methodology and evidence synthesis. He currently co-teaches a module on critical appraisal of the research literature to graduate medical students and is a long serving member of an instututional research ethics committee.
Guo Liang
Dr Guo Liang is a Senior Epidemiologist in Singapore Clinical Research Institute, Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore. She is an active member of Cochrane Singapore. Dr Guo obtained her Bachelor of Medicine, Master of Public Health, and currently working on a Master program on Pharmaceutical Economics. Her working experience covers Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, tertiary hospital, and also research institute. She is experienced in syndrome surveillance, epidemics management, community health promotion, project management (birth cohort, and other various clinical research projects), protocols review, methodology consultation, and also delivering workshops on study design, clinical research, evidence synthesis, clinical practice guideline development, etc. Her research interest covers infectious and non-communicable disease, community health promotion, birth cohort, patient-reported outcomes, systematic review and meta-analysis, healthcare information analytics, program evaluation, and health services research. Over the years, she has broadly collaborated with partners from various medical fields, including field epidemiology, infectious epidemics, chronic disease management, community healthcare, occupational hazard, obstetrics, paediatrics, nephrology. She generates high-quality academic outputs and published several research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Jia Hui Chai
Health Economist, Health Economics and Outcome Research (HEOR) department
Singapore Clinical Research Institute, Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore
Staff member, Cochrane Singapore
Jia Hui Chai currently works as a Health Economist at the Health Economics and Outcome Research (HEOR) department, Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI) – a business unit under Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore (CRIS). She is also a staff member of Cochrane Singapore. She received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics with Economics from the University of Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia, and master’s degree in public health from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to joining CRIS, she was a Research Associate at the Health Intervention and Policy Evaluation Research (HIPER) Center at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUS. She has experience in teaching topics related to economic evaluation and the methods, and the use of R in network meta-analysis. Her research interests include health technology assessment, economic evaluation methods, health services research, evidence synthesis, and real-world data research.
▎Cochrane Taiwan
Cliff Chiehfeng Chen
Dr. Chiehfeng Chen is a leading expert in plastic surgery and evidence-based medicine. He holds a PhD from Taipei Medical University, an MPH from Johns Hopkins University, and an MD from China Medical University. He is a chief plastic surgeon at Wanfang Hospital and Director of the Comprehensive Care Center for Burn and Complex Wounds and the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine.
As Director of Cochrane Taiwan, Dr. Chen promotes systematic reviews and meta-analyses to improve clinical practice. His research focuses on perioperative care, wound management, dermatology, and public health. He also advises Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Dispute Mediation Committee and other healthcare boards. His contributions have made him a key figure in evidence-based medicine and public health policy.
Yu-Kang Tu
Professor Yu-Kang Tu earned his dental degree from National Taiwan University and completed his specialist training in periodontology. He obtained a master’s degree in periodontology from the Eastman Dental Institute at University College London. Subsequently, he pursued a PhD in Statistical Epidemiology at the University of Leeds in the UK, where he was later promoted to Principal Research Fellow. In 2012, he returned to Taiwan and joined the College of Public Health at National Taiwan University. He currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean. Professor Tu has received several awards for his research and teaching, including the Outstanding Research Award from the National Science and Technology Council in Taiwan last year. His main research interests are advanced methods for evidence synthesis and causal inference in observational studies. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, such as BMJ, Lancet Oncology, Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Annals of Internal Medicine, Circulation, Gastroenterology, and Research Synthesis Methods.