Chris Cotter, MPH, PhD candidate, is a Senior Research Manager at the MEI and leads several operational research studies in Africa and the Asia Pacific to improve the impact and effectiveness of surveillance and response in malaria-eliminating countries. He has worked closely with Ministries of Health and malaria programs for over 13 years, developing surveillance and response-related tools and metrics, building capacity in monitoring and evaluation, and program optimization in passive and active malaria surveillance. Chris’s primary research focus is on evaluating and optimizing active case detection strategies, including aspects on the performance of diagnostic methods used, cost and cost-effectiveness, and qualitative research on the feasibility and acceptability of reactive case detection approaches for malaria elimination. He has published extensively on active case detection for malaria and was the lead author of a seminal paper on global malaria elimination progress published in the Lancet.

Prior to joining the MEI, Chris served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a rural health educator in Uzbekistan.

Chris has an MPH in International Health from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and is pursuing a PhD at Uppsala University in Sweden.