Madeleine has over 25 years of research experience focused on large-scale, climate-sensitive, health interventions in Low- and Middle-income Countries. 

Madeleine Thomson Ph.D is the Head of Climate Impacts at the Wellcome Trust; a politically and financially independent foundation which supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. Prior to this role she was the interim Head of Our Planet Our Health at Wellcome. The Trust support researchers, policy makers & the public in tackling today’s health challenges including those associated with climate change. Dr Thomson is also a visiting Professor at Lancaster University, UK and an Emeritus professor at Columbia University, New York where she previously held senior research positions at the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society and the Mailman School of Public Health. While at IRI she served as Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Early Warning Systems for Malaria and Other Climate-Sensitive Diseases (including meningococcal meningitis and ZikaV) and was co-chair of the cross Columbia working group on global health security.  Originally trained as a field entomologist she spent much of her early career undertaking operational research to support large-scale health interventions in Africa (e.g. the national impregnated bednet programme in The Gambia).   She was educated at the University of Sheffield (BSc), Imperial College London (MSc) and the University of Liverpool (PhD).

Prior to joining Wellcome, Madeleine worked as Senior Research Scientist at The International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University, where she directed the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on ‘Malaria Early Warning Systems and other Climate Sensitive Diseases’. She was also a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Her research has involved the development of new data, methodologies and tools for improving climate-sensitive health interventions with a focus on infectious disease, public health outcomes of hydrometeorological disasters and nutrition.

Madeleine is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Health Informatics, Computing and Statistics at Lancaster University Medical School.