Bastian joined Oxford Population Health in October 2021 as a DPhil (PhD) student and will, from October 2024, be an HDR UK Early Career Research Fellow on the Molecules to Health Records driver programme. His DPhil project aimed to study the associations of various body composition measures with the risk of severe, community-acquired respiratory tract infections in the UK Biobank, by using methods from observational and genetic epidemiology. Prior to this, he graduated with an MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology (University of Oxford), and MSc in Health Economics and International Health Policy (London School of Economics), and a BSc in Economics (University of Frankfurt).

Project Information

Research Driver Programme: Molecules to Health Records

Project Title: Development and phenotyping of ethnically diverse and global cohorts

Summary:

Bastian’s work on the HDR UK Molecules to Health Records driver programme will involve developing further and phenotyping more deeply large-scale prospective cohort studies in South and Southeast Asian populations, such as in India and Malaysia. South and Southeast Asian populations have a high burden of cardiometabolic disease, though the underlying genetic and modifiable mechanisms are yet to be fully understood.

He is interested in assessing ethnic differences in body composition and patterns of physical activity in ethnically diverse cohorts and in teasing out how these might differentially affect disease, by developing follow-up methods, such as the large-scale deployment of verbal autopsy and linkage to health records, in low- and middle-income countries.

Bastian will also be a visiting researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany, studying cardiometabolic risk factors for communicable and non-communicable diseases in cross-cohort analyses between the German National Cohort, UK Biobank, and ethnically diverse global cohort studies.

How will this advance research?

Carrying out research in historically understudied populations will contribute to a deeper understanding of risk factors for chronic diseases, which might not be easily detectable in other populations, such as differences between occupational and recreational physical activity, differences in nutritional factors or body fat distribution, or genetic differences that might reveal future treatment targets, for example, for the prevention or treatment of obesity or cardiometabolic diseases.