Professor Joel Tarning received his PhD from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden in 2007 and started his scientific research career the same year at the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, Thailand. In 2013, he took on the responsibility as Head of Clinical Pharmacology at MORU and has been leading the pharmacology department since. He was conferred the title Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, UK in 2016. He is also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Thailand since 2016. Today, he leads a large and diverse team of 30 people studying clinical pharmacology and the main scientific directions within the group are pharmacometric data analysis, bioanalytical method development, drug quantification of clinical study samples, omics-based research, and medicine quality. Professor Tarning has published >200 peer-reviewed articles resulting in >15,000 citations.

Professor Tarning’s main research is focused on dose-optimisation of drugs used to treat neglected tropical diseases in vulnerable populations at risk of treatment failure and resistance development, such as children and pregnant women. He uses mainly population pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling and simulation approaches to answer these important public health questions. His work on dose-optimisation of antimalarial drugs has already had a global impact in terms of revised dosing guidelines in young children. He was awarded the Giorgio Segré Prize from the EUFEPS in 2014, the Bailey K. Ashford Medal from ASTMH in 2019, and the Grahame-Smith Prize from the British Pharmacological Society in 2020.