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
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
Gray E, Cooper L, Bandyopadhyay A, et al., 2023, The origins and risk factors for serotype-2 vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV2) emergences in Africa during 2016-2019, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol:228, ISSN:0022-1899, Pages:80-88
Pons-Salort M, Lambert B, Kamau E, et al., 2023, Changes in transmission of Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) in England inferred from seroprevalence data., Elife, Vol:12, ISSN:2050-084X