Malta-born Sandro Galea, 43, a physician and epidemiologist known for his research linking health to social disadvantages likepoverty and lack of education, is the new dean of the School of Public Health of Boston University (BU).

Galea is currently the Anna Cheskis Gelman and Murray Charles Gelman professor and chair of the department of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He will assume his new post on January 1, succeeding Robert Meenan.

Galea, who in 2006 was named one of Time magazine’s epidemiology innovators, serves on the New York City Board of Health and is chair of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Community Services Board.

His research has examined many aspects of public health, from the causes of brain disorders to the consequences of mass trauma and conflict worldwide, including the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was the lead author on a groundbreaking study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2011 that calculated the number of deaths caused by six social factors.

Galea has published more than 450 scientific journal articles, 50 book chapters and commentaries, and nine books. His latest book, co-authored with Katherine Keyes, is the textbook Epidemiology Matters: A New Introduction to Methodological Foundations. He is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society and of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

He trained as a primary care physician at the University of Toronto and practised in rural communities in Canada and Somalia.

In Malta, he was educated at Savio College, Dingli, up to the age of 14, when he moved to Canada with his parents. He is married to Margaret Kruk, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, and has two children, Oliver, 9, and Isabel, 8.