Alessia Melegaro, a Scientist for the Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management

A researcher of Dondena Center since 2008 and a member of its Management Board since 2011, Alessia Melegaro joins the Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management as assistant professor in the academic year 2012-2013.

After graduating in Economics at Università Bocconi with a dissertation on the use of demographic models to study the historical dynamics of infectious diseases, Melegaro won a Medical Research Council scholarship and moved to London to take part in a research project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2005 she obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences from Warwick University with a dissertation on the use of mathematical models to study the cost-effectiveness of vaccination policies. She worked in the Modelling and Economics Unit of London Health Protection Agency for several years.

Among the several grants earned to carry on her research projects (by World Health Organisation, European Communicable Disease Centre and European Union), in 2011 Melegaro received an ERC Starting Grant of more than 1 million Euros for the years 2012-2016 to study the impact of demographic changes on infectious disease transmission and control in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Her current research focuses on the field of public health and on the effects of policy interventions in low-resource contexts. Melegaro collaborates as a reviewer with several journals and published Pandemie d'Italia. Dalla peste nera all'influenza suina: l'impatto sulla società (Egea, 2010), written with Guido Alfani (Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management).