Positions
| Dates | Role |
|---|---|
| 2024 – present | Postdoctoral Researcher Umeå University, Sweden · Department of Epidemiology and Global Health · EU-funded IDAlert project |
| 2020 – 2024 | Doctoral Researcher Umeå University, Sweden · Department of Epidemiology and Global Health |
| 2018 – 2019 | Early-Career Researcher Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences · Warsaw, Poland |
Education
| Year | Degree |
|---|---|
| 2024 | PhD, Epidemiology & Public Health Umeå University, Sweden — Navigating epidemics by leveraging data science and data-driven modelling |
| 2017 | MSc, Applied Mathematics Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan |
| 2009 | BSc, Mathematics University of Gujrat, Pakistan |
Grants & Awards
| Year | Award |
|---|---|
| 2026–2028 | Kempe Foundation Postdoctoral Scholarship Two-year competitive fellowship |
| 2025 | MIRAI Japan–Sweden Mobility Grant Long-term mobility grant for Early-Career Researchers · SEK 130,000 |
| 2024 | Medical Faculty Grant for Internationalization Umeå University · SEK 28,500 |
| 2022 | Travel Grant for Research Visit Awarded during PhD · SEK 18,500 |
Applications under review (decisions expected 2026)
| Year | Application |
|---|---|
| 2026 | FORMAS Early-Career Researcher grant Submitted · decision expected Oct 2026 |
| 2026 | FORMAS Climate & Health call (Sweden) Application submitted |
| 2026 | Horizon Europe Application submitted |
| 2026 | FORTE — abortion research project Decision expected Oct–Nov 2026 |
Selected Publications
A complete, continuously updated list is on my Google Scholar profile and the Research Projects & Publications page. Selected first-author and contributing work:
- Farooq Z, Rocklöv J, Semenza JC (2025). Northward expansion of Aedes albopictus-associated arbovirus transmission risk in Europe. The Lancet Planetary Health.
- Farooq Z, Segelmark L, Rocklöv J, et al. (2025). Impact of climate and Aedes albopictus establishment on dengue and chikungunya outbreaks in Europe. The Lancet Planetary Health.
- Farooq Z, Sjödin H, Rocklöv J, Brännström Å (2025). Improving case fatality ratio estimates in ongoing pandemics through case-to-death time distribution analysis. Scientific Reports.
- Farooq Z, Rocklöv J, Wallin J, et al. (2024). Input precision, output excellence: the importance of data quality control and method selection in disease risk mapping — authors’ reply. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.
- Farooq Z, Sjödin H, Semenza JC, et al. (2023). European projections of West Nile virus transmission under climate change scenarios. One Health.
- Farooq Z, Rocklöv J, Wallin J, et al. (2022). Artificial intelligence to predict West Nile virus outbreaks with eco-climatic drivers. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.
- van Daalen KR, Tonne C, Semenza JC, …, Farooq Z, et al. (2024). The 2024 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The Lancet Public Health.
- van Daalen KR, Romanello M, Rocklöv J, …, Farooq Z, et al. (2022). The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The Lancet Public Health.
- Sjödin H, Johansson AF, Brännström Å, Farooq Z, et al. (2020). COVID-19 healthcare demand and mortality in Sweden. International Journal of Epidemiology.
- Sjödin H, Wilder-Smith A, Osman S, Farooq Z, Rocklöv J (2020). Only strict quarantine measures can curb the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, 2020. Eurosurveillance.
Teaching & Supervision
| Years | Activity |
|---|---|
| 2022–2025 | Teaching (MSc level), Umeå University Modelling and Simulations; Epidemiology; Climate Change and Health |
| 2024 – present | Co-supervisor of a PhD scholar University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan |
| 2025 | Supervisor of a master’s student Umeå University, Sweden |
Conferences & Seminars
| Year | Presentation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Nobel Petite Day — presenter · Umeå University, Sweden |
| 2025 | Dealing with the polycrisis (UTRI) — session coordinator & presenter · Umeå University |
| 2025 | Modelling dengue importations — research seminar · University of Trento, Italy |
| 2024 | Department Day, Umeå University — Young Researcher talk |
| 2023 | ESCAIDE 2023 — poster · Barcelona, Spain |
| 2023 | Connecting Health and Climate Change — oral presentation · Stockholm, Sweden |
| 2023 | Urban spaces and mosquitoes on a changing planet — oral presentation · Barcelona, Spain |
| 2022 | Polish Scientific Network conference — oral presentation · Wrocław, Poland |
| 2022 | One Health PACT modelling seminar — invited talk · Leiden University, Netherlands |
| 2022 | Mathematical modelling and its applications — keynote · University of Gujrat, Pakistan |
Peer Review
Reviewer (since 2021) for Environmental Health Perspectives, PLOS Climate, Scientific Reports, Vaccines, PLOS Computational Biology, and The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.
Research Visits
Fondazione Edmund Mach, Applied Ecology Unit, Trento, Italy — research collaboration and networking (May 2025).
Technical Skills
- Programming: R, MATLAB, Python, Stata, SPSS, shell scripting.
- Machine learning & AI: classification, regression, clustering, PCA, explainable AI, boosting/bagging, neural networks.
- Biostatistics: survival and time-to-event analysis, hypothesis testing, multivariate analysis.
- Data science: data wrangling and feature engineering, web scraping and APIs, spatial data science, reproducible workflows with Git and Quarto.
- Languages: English, Urdu, Punjabi.
Contact
- Email — zia.farooq@umu.se
- Google Scholar — scholar.google.com
- GitHub — github.com/Ziaf021
- Address — Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden