Zoë Hyde

Dr Zoë Hyde is an epidemiologist and biostatistician based at the Western Australian Centre for Health and Ageing at the University of Western Australia. Her research seeks to understand how older people can age in a healthy way and avoid problems such as cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment. She received the Endocrine Society of Australia’s Servier Young Investigator Award for her work on frailty.

She also has an active program of research that aims to improve quality of life in older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Together with colleagues across Australia, she is working to understand how the detection of dementia can be improved in primary practice. She also helped to develop the first quality of life tool for older Aboriginal people.

In addition to championing the health and well-being of older people, Dr Hyde is a leading public health advocate. Her work on COVID-19 has received national and international acclaim. She was a co-author of the influential John Snow Memorandum, which outlined the scientific consensus on COVID-19. This widely influential statement, published in The Lancet, was signed by over 6,900 scientists, researchers and healthcare professionals from across the world, and endorsed by 24 organisations, including the Federation of American Scientists, European Public Health Association, Union of Concerned Scientists, British Geriatrics Society, and the German Society for Epidemiology.

In 2021, Dr Hyde led a cross-disciplinary team (comprising experts in epidemiology, economics, and mathematics) which released independent modelling showing Australia needed to aim for a 90% vaccination target to minimise morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. This work received widespread media coverage, reaching 7.9 million people via television, radio, and print media.

Dr Hyde is a popular science communicator and is a regular contributor to The Conversation. Her articles have been read over 650 thousand times, making her the 12th most popular author from The University of Western Australia. She has also written articles for Policy Forum and The Guardian. She is regularly approached for comment by national and international media, and has been quoted by outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, CBC News, Deutsche Welle, Die Zeit, Nature News, and New Scientist.

Dr Hyde has served as a peer reviewer for more than 30 scientific journals, including Science, Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, Nature Communications, and Clinical Infectious Diseases, and is a statistical reviewer for the Medical Journal of Australia. She has published extensively with more than 80 different co-authors from Australia, Europe, the United States of America, and Asia, in leading medical journals including The Lancet.