Leadership Team

Direk is the Head of Microbiology at Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Thailand. He is a research physician with an MSc in Medical Statistics and a PhD in Life and Biomolecular Sciences. He holds the positions of Professor of Epidemiology at the Mahidol University, Thailand, and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, UK.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a central focus of Direk’s research. He has led numerous clinical and epidemiological studies on AMR in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Notably, he developed an offline, user-friendly application called AMASS (www.amass.website), which enables hospitals to perform data analysis and generate AMR surveillance reports independently. The Ministry of Public Health in Thailand has adopted this application, allowing over 127 public hospitals to contribute summary data to the new open-access national AMR dashboard. This dashboard provides up-to-date information on the total number of patients who have died from bloodstream infections caused by AMR in each hospital and across the country.

Direk also initiated the AMR dictionary (www.amrdictionary.net) to address the jargon surrounding AMR in local languages. He advocates the concept of the ‘antibiotic footprint’ (www.antibioticfootprint.net) as a tool to communicate to the public the magnitude of antibiotic use in humans, animals and industry. He serves as a board member of the Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug-resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC) (https://sedric.org.uk)