Honouring Shoji Miyagawa and Jeremy Farrar for their contributions as GloPID-R co-chairs

Following successful and productive terms on the GloPID-R Executive Board, two of our co-chairs – Shoji Miyagawa and Jeremy Farrar – stepped down in December 2022. It was a great pleasure for me to work alongside Shoji and Jeremy for many years as two very dedicated and valued members of GloPID-R. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their important contributions, which have shaped and advanced GloPID-R’s mission to ensure coordinated and effective preparedness and research response among funders to epidemics and pandemics.

Barbara Kerstiens
Head of Unit, Research & Innovation DG, European Commission

Shoji Miyagawa

Former Managing Director, Department of Innovation & Clinical Research Center
Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED)

Shoji represented AMED (the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development), which joined GloPID-R in 2015. He was elected to the Executive Board in 2020.

Since 2018, Shoji has productively contributed to a great number of our initiatives, starting with his participation in GloPID-R’s response to the Kivu Ebola epidemic in DRC in 2018. During his mandate, he was a valued participant in the Data Sharing and the Clinical Trials Networks & Funders working groups, contributing to the recently-published “GloPID-R Funders Living Roadmap for Clinical Trial Coordination” among other outputs. In 2019, when the GloPID-R General Assembly was held in Tokyo, Shoji played a key role in organizing the event in his home town. He was actively involved in developing GloPID-R’s response to COVID-19 throughout the global pandemic. Very often, he made himself available for GloPID-R online meetings, even staying up late into the night to attend.

Since the GloPID-R Regional Hub strategy was introduced in 2019, Shoji has provided his steadfast guidance and support to drive GloPID-R’s pilot project of establishing a regional hub in the Asia-Pacific region. He has generously shared his knowledge of the relevant scientific landscape in this region.

Although Shoji officially ended his mandate as an Executive Board co-chair in late 2022, our network continues to benefit from his insights and experience. Shoji has made GloPID-R a stronger and better organization, and we are grateful for his constructive advice, wisdom and kindness. We acknowledge with gratitude his optimism about GloPID-R’s future.

Jeremy Farrar

Former Director, Wellcome Trust
Chief Scientist, WHO

Represented by Jeremy Farrar, the Wellcome Trust became a GloPID-R member in December 2015, just two years after GloPID-R was launched. As a vocal advocate in international discussions on efficient research funding, early on Jeremy stressed the value of GloPID-R’s partnership and commitment to improve information sharing among funders, align decision-making and allow for an expedited, coordinated approach among major funding agencies.

In February 2016, in the face of the Zika outbreak, Jeremy highlighted the importance of sharing data and results as rapidly and openly as possible to guarantee an efficient response to such a devastating infectious disease outbreak. During the GloPID-R General Assembly in Washington, DC in March 2016, Jeremy advised that data sharing should be one of GloPID-R key priorities. The Data Sharing Working Group was established shortly thereafter, producing major reports including the “GloPID-R Roadmap for Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies” in 2019.

Jeremy was elected to serve as a GloPID-R co-chair on the Executive Board in February 2018 and he was re-elected in November 2020. He played a key role in international response, notably to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC in 2018-2019, for which Wellcome provided emergency funding. The Wellcome Trust led a call to research funders, scientific journals and NGOs to sign a statement on sharing research findings relevant to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC.

Jeremy regularly advocated on priority topics of interest and importance for GloPID-R. Under his leadership as Director of the Wellcome Trust, in 2018-2019 it supported the development of epidemic social sciences to improve how funders address knowledge, infrastructure and investment gaps in this domain. More recently, he highlighted the threat of COVID-19 in low-resource settings and the importance of continuing collaborative research with low- and middle-income countries to ensure we do not repeat past mistakes in response to future pandemics.

We wish Jeremy every success in his new role as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization, and thank him for his contributions to shaping GloPID-R’s priorities and ensuring that the voice of global funders is heard.