Dr Mohamed Ahmed Hammoud

Mohamed is a Research Fellow at the Kirby Institute, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney. He currently focuses on several clinical and behavioural COVID-19 projects, including: Investigating serological surveillance for COVID-19 in healthcare workers; a study of conserved and non-conserved immune responses in people with COVID-19 infection; and population-level surveillance investigating the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities in Australia.

Mohamed completed his PhD at the Kirby Institute, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney, investigating epidemiological perspectives to identify underlying factors that exacerbate HIV, STI and harms associated with drug use, and sociobehavioural perspectives to understand the context in which risk occur. His research has been used to inform a national policy change to the Australasian pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) Guidelines, the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug ‘Ice’, the Therapeutic Goods Act Interim Decision on Amyl Nitrite, illicit drug use and public health harm reduction campaigns. His work has been cited in the UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2019 HIV update, UNODC HIV Prevention Technical Report, and WHO PrEP monitoring implementation tool. Prior to beginning his PhD research, Mohamed completed his honours degree in Cognitive Psychology at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour, and Development. His honours thesis was a true experiment-design that determined how priming effects influence initial stages of the process of visual word recognition and demonstrated episodic and semantic memory systems operate as two distinct memory structures.

Drawing on his software engineering experience, Mohamed pioneered the design and development of a research-based system by modernising outmoded research methodologies to develop a world-first automatic cohort data collection system known as FAME. Currently used by national and international researchers in clinical and behavioural research studies, FAME automatically maintains data collection, participant communication, data cleaning, and tracks changes in individual behaviours overtime.

Broad Research Areas:

Sexuality and sexual identity; Mental health. Transmission and prevention of HIV other sexually transmissible infections; Gay men's health; Sexual behaviour. Drug use and misuse. Subcultural affiliation.