Dr. William GreerDirector, Clinical Epidemiology,Sidra Medical and Research CentreDr. William Greer is the Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Division at Sidra Medical and Research Center in Qatar. Originally a physicist, he obtained his PhD in Bioengineering in 1978 from Strathclyde University in Scotland, where he developed an integrated mathematical model of the neural and chemical control of breathing in humans. His postdoctoral research was divided between an epidemiological study of musculoskeletal injuries in Mt. Isa Mines, Australia, and the application of systems techniques to the development of totally-closed breathing circuits at Manchester University in England. In 1980 he joined the National Institute for Medical Research in London where he initially commissioned its new mainframe computer system prior to spending several years collaborating with biologists on theoretical aspects of developmental biology and neurobiology, including the development of the first hardware and software computerized mapping system for biological electron microscopy. While at the National Institute, he also developed the first comprehensive bioinformatics software package in the UK which was distributed throughout leading British universities and MRC Units, including the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the National Institute for Biological Standards, Imperial College, Birkbeck College and Dundee University. In 1986 Dr. Greer moved to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSH&RC) in Saudi Arabia as the first biostatistician in the Arabian Gulf. In 1988 he became Chairman of the Biostatistics and Scientific Computing Department at KFSH&RC where he continued to function as a biostatistician and epidemiologist until his return to the UK in 1996 as a private research consultant.
During 1997 his principal contract involved the epidemiology and modeling of osteoporosis in women at the Nuffield Hospital in Oxford. In 1998 he returned to KFSH&RC to create a new Scientific Computing Unit, focused on clinical image analysis, biological simulation, geographical information systems and bioinformatics. In 2004, Dr. Greer assumed a faculty position in Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical School in Qatar, where he was responsible for teaching Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Evidence Based Medicine for the next 4 years. Prior to accepting his current position within Sidra Research Centre, Dr. Greer spent several years as a Health Statistician, providing the essential patient projections which underpinned the strategic planning of Sidra Hospital. His current research interests include postmenopausal osteoporosis, analytical aspects of patient compliance, understanding the factors that control the timing of the female menopause, biological and physiological modeling, and epidemiological aspects of gestational diabetes and pregnancy in Qatar women.
