Joe Harris
Senior Analyst Programmer
BA (Oxon), MSt, MSc
joseph.harris@thekids.org.au
Joe is a software developer who joined The Kids Research Institute Australia in January 2020, where he now works in the Geospatial Health and Development team. Prior to that he spent more than five years in similar roles at the University of Oxford. Joe has experience developing applications using many programming languages and technologies. Before becoming a software developer, he published non-fiction children’s books on a variety of subjects.
His focus within the group is the development of software solutions to further epidemiological research efforts. He develops data engineering applications to facilitate the exploration and dissemination of research results. Some of his recent projects include the application of Machine Learning (ML) methods to automate the consolidation of multi-dimensional epidemiological data using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) components. He is also making engineering contributions to the group's COVID-19 modelling framework.
Projects
Modelling the COVID pandemic with the Geographical COVID-19 Model (GEO-COV)
Researchers have developed a new model for simulating covid-19 outbreaks in Western Australia.
Published research
Trends in treatment-seeking for fever in children under five years old in 151 countries from 1990 to 2020
Access to medical treatment for fever is essential to prevent morbidity and mortality in individuals and to prevent transmission of communicable febrile illness in communities. Quantification of the rates at which treatment is accessed is critical for health system planning and a prerequisite for disease burden estimates.
Evaluating COVID-19-Related Disruptions to Effective Malaria Case Management in 2020–2021 and Its Potential Effects on Malaria Burden in Sub-Saharan Africa
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to far-reaching disruptions to health systems, including preventative and curative services for malaria. The aim of this study was to estimate the magnitude of disruptions in malaria case management in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on malaria burden during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used survey data collected by the World Health Organization, in which individual country stakeholders reported on the extent of disruptions to malaria diagnosis and treatment.
Maps and metrics of insecticide-treated net access, use, and nets-per-capita in Africa from 2000-2020
Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are one of the most widespread and impactful malaria interventions in Africa, yet a spatially-resolved time series of ITN coverage has never been published. Using data from multiple sources, we generate high-resolution maps of ITN access, use, and nets-per-capita annually from 2000 to 2020 across the 40 highest-burden African countries.
Education and Qualifications
- BA Ancient and Modern History – University of Oxford, UK
- MSt Medieval History – University of Oxford, UK
- MSc Computer Science – University of Birmingham, UK