Summary
Nicholas Grassly is a Professor in the Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology, head of the Vaccine Epidemiology Research Group and co-lead of the vaccines theme for the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis. He works on vaccine trials and disease surveillance. His research brings together epidemiological analysis and laboratory testing to identify optimal methods for disease prevention, focusing on pathogens in low- and middle-income countries such as polio, rotavirus and typhoid. He works with a network of collaborators at institutes worldwide, including in the UK, DRC, France, Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zambia.
He studied biology at Oxford University, trained in epidemiology at Imperial College London and learnt mathematics with the Open University. He was a Royal Society URF (2004-2011) and then Professor at Imperial College London (2011-present). He has served on various boards and committees, including the WHO SAGE polio group (2008-2020) and WHO SAGE COVID-19 vaccines working group (2020-2021). He teaches on the MSc (Epidemiology), MPH and undergraduate biomedical courses at Imperial College London. His work is funded by the MRC, Wellcome Trust, Royal Society, WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Current research topics: Rapid diagnostics for poliovirus surveillance; Epidemiology of polio eradication and endgame strategy; Environmental surveillance; Vaccine clinical trial design and analysis; Causes of oral vaccine failure (rotavirus and poliovirus); Human infection challenge for vaccine development; Vaccine-induced immune correlates of protection; Typhoid epidemiology
Publications
Journals
Cooper LV, Erbeto TB, Danzomo AA, et al., 2024, Effectiveness of poliovirus vaccines against circulating vaccine-derived type 2 poliomyelitis in Nigeria between 2017 and 2022: a case-control study, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol:24, ISSN:1473-3099, Pages:427-436
Bandyopadhyay AS, Lopez Cavestany R, Blake IM, et al., 2023, Use of inactivated poliovirus vaccine for poliovirus outbreak response., Lancet Infect Dis
Uzzell CB, Abraham D, Rigby J, et al., 2023, Environmental surveillance for Salmonella Typhi and its association with typhoid fever incidence in India and Malawi, Journal of Infectious Diseases, ISSN:0022-1899
Shaw AG, Troman C, Akello JO, et al., 2023, Defining a research agenda for environmental wastewater surveillance of pathogens, Nature Medicine, Vol:29, ISSN:1078-8956, Pages:2155-2157
Shaw AGG, Mampuela TK, Lofiko EL, et al., 2023, Sensitive poliovirus detection using nested PCR and nanopore sequencing: a prospective validation study, Nature Microbiology, ISSN:2058-5276