Photo Credit: Thomas Rafalzyk

Professor Vernon Lee is the Executive Director of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

Prof Lee is a public health physician with extensive global health experience in pandemic preparedness and response, infectious disease epidemiology and health policy and management. He completed his medical education at the National University of Singapore, and also holds Master of Public Health and Master of Business Administration degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, USA, as well as a PhD in infectious diseases epidemiology from the Australian National University.

Formerly an Advisor to the Assistant Director General for Health, Security and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters; Medical Epidemiologist in the WHO Office in Indonesia; and the Head of the Biodefence Centre in the Singapore Armed Forces, Prof Lee has been involved in major global health security collaborations, and has developed pandemic preparedness plans, risk assessment and disease management programmes at the global and national levels. He continues to serve on expert committees at the international level.

For Singapore's COVID-19 response, Prof Lee played an instrumental role in designing and implementing key national policies on preparedness and risk-management, helming whole-of-government responses, and public health operations, in addition to advising the Multi-Ministry Taskforce on COVID-19. Over the years, he was involved in Singapore's response to the 2009 influenza pandemic, Zika, tuberculosis and other outbreaks. He also conducted epidemiological investigations for SARS in Singapore, and the avian flu outbreaks in Indonesia when he was seconded by MOH to WHO. To prevent disease transmission, Prof Lee oversaw enhancements to Singapore's national childhood immunisation schedule and developed the national adult immunisation schedule. He was also involved in initiating WHO's antimicrobial resistance global action plan and is spearheading Singapore's corresponding National Strategic Action Plan.

Prof Lee is also Senior Director, Communicable Diseases Division at MOH, Adjunct Professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, and a council member of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore. He is an avid educator and researcher and has published about 200 scientific papers, many in top journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and The Lancet journals.