Summary
Nicholas Grassly is a Professor in the Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology, head of the Vaccine Epidemiology Research Group and associate director of 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, 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 MRC Infections and Immunity Board (2012-16), 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; Causes of oral vaccine failure (rotavirus and poliovirus); Human infection challenge for vaccine development; Typhoid epidemiology
Publications
Journals
John J, Bavdekar A, Rongsen-Chandola T, et al., 2023, Burden of typhoid and paratyphoid fever in India., New England Journal of Medicine, Vol:388, ISSN:0028-4793, Pages:1491-1500
Macklin GR, Goel AK, Mach O, et al., 2023, Epidemiology of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks between 2016 and 2020, Vaccine, Vol:41, ISSN:0264-410X, Pages:A19-A24
Molodecky NA, Jafari H, Safdar RM, et al., 2023, Modelling the spread of serotype-2 vaccine derived-poliovirus outbreak in Pakistan and Afghanistan to inform outbreak control strategies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vaccine, Vol:41, ISSN:0264-410X, Pages:A93-A104
Akello J, Bujaki E, Shaw A, et al., 2023, Comparison of eleven RNA extraction methods for poliovirus direct molecular detection in stool samples, Microbiology Spectrum, Vol:11, ISSN:2165-0497, Pages:1-13
Grassly NC, Andrews N, Cooper G, et al., 2023, Effect of maternal immunisation with multivalent vaccines containing inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) on infant IPV immune response: A phase 4, multi-centre randomised trial, Vaccine, Vol:41, ISSN:0264-410X, Pages:1299-1302