HEAL - Health Emergencies Analytics Lab (formerly known as Covid Crisis Lab)

Donor - Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi

Alessia Melegaro is an Associate Professor of Demography and Social Statistics at Bocconi University’s Department of Social and Political Sciences. She is also an Associate Researcher at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. Trained as an economist, she earned her PhD from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

Her research lies at the intersection of demography, epidemiology, and public health. She is the Director of HEAL (Health Emergencies Analytics Lab, formerly the Bocconi Covid Crisis Lab), a research center dedicated to the study of global health emergencies.

Team members

A dedicated team of researchers with interdisciplinary backgrounds.

Joint Purpose

In 2025, the Covid Crisis Lab began its transition into the Health Emergencies Analytics Lab (HEAL), marking its evolution from a center established to address an unprecedented crisis into a scientific platform dedicated to the study of global health emergencies. This transformation reflects a substantial expansion of its scientific mission, moving beyond the analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic toward a structural, long-term perspective on the interactions between health, individual behavior, institutional systems, and socio-economic contexts.

Building on the expertise developed during the pandemic, HEAL now adopts a fully interdisciplinary approach that integrates mathematical modeling, traditional statistical methods and machine learning, behavioral sciences, and social psychology. The support of the Invernizzi Foundation has been instrumental in this journey, ensuring scientific continuity, strengthening the Lab’s ability to attract young researchers, and fostering the development of new high-impact research areas.

Core Activities

Investigate the effect of the crisis on derogation of ordinary rules of corporate governance
Understand the spread of epidemics through the improvement of models characterizing the epidemic and the health behavior of individuals
Identify the effect of firm ownership and other characteristics on the resilience of firms through crisis.
Analyze the effect on the financial sector and how it can contribute to sustain hard-hit firms
Study the effect of social distancing and its acceptance by the public, the effect of the crisis on pollution, the future of food safety and sustainability and the role of social capital and trust in periods of pandemics
Disseminate the and initiatives and findings of the Lab through several channels, including academic publications, a dedicated website, workshops and media releases