Ali is Head of Epidemiology and Real World Data (RWD) Science at Penta, and a Professor of Epidemiology at UCL.
Her main interests are in paediatric infections, including HIV, hepatitis and COVID-19. She co-leads a network of cohort studies across Eastern and Western Europe and Thailand, addressing questions about the health of children living with HIV and related infections. This network is the European Pregnancy and Paediatric Infections Cohort Collaboration (EPPICC), which is jointly coordinated across UCL and Penta. She also co-leads the large EC-funded “VERDI” collaboration which investigates the impact of COVID-19 variants of concern on pregnant women and children across Europe and globally. She is a co-investigator in the International AIDS Society Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER) Cohort Collaboration, within which questions of global public health importance for children and young people living with HIV are addressed.
For hepatitis C, she is developing studies investigating treatment options for pregnant women with chronic HCV. Her observational studies run parallel to the paediatric and adolescent infection trials run at UCL, providing a complementary approach to addressing questions of trial feasibility as well as longer term effectiveness and safety.
Ali is a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Workshop on HIV Pediatrics, and she is a trustee of the Children’s HIV Association.