Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and Ashall Professor of Infection and Immunity, Sir Andrew is Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford and a consultant paediatrician at Oxford Children’s Hospital and Fellow of St Cross College. He received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2021 for services to Public Health, especially in the pandemic, and received the Order of Medical Merit (Grande Oficial) from the Federal Republic of Brazil in 2022.
He obtained his medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, University of London in 1989 and trained in Paediatrics at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, UK, specialising in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary’s Hospital, London, UK and at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada. He obtained his PhD at St Mary’s Hospital, London, UK in 1999 studying immunity to Neisseria meningitidis in children and proceeded to work on anti-bacterial innate immune responses in children in Canada before returning to his current position at the University of Oxford in 2001.
His research includes the design, development and clinical evaluation of vaccines in UK, Asia, Africa and Latin America, including those for COVID-19, typhoid, meningococcus, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococcus, plague, pertussis, influenza, rabies, coronavirus and Ebola, and leads studies using a human challenge model of paratyphoid and typhoid. He was the chief investigator for the clinical trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which led to authorisation of the vaccine for use in more than 180 countries with over 3 billion doses distributed. The COVID19 vaccine team received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 2022. He has supervised 45 PhD students and his publications include over 600 manuscripts and books on various topics in paediatrics and infectious diseases. His seminal work on typhoid supported the WHO prequalification of a new typhoid conjugate vaccine and WHO recommendations for its use in countries with a high burden of disease.
