Professor Gilbert’s chief research interest is the development of vaccines that work by inducing strong and protective T cell responses. Following the discovery that heterologous prime-boost immunisation, in which the same antigen is delivered in first one vector and then another, is highly immunogenic in pre-clinical studies, she designed antigen inserts for, and produced DNA, MVA and fowlpox vaccines which were then manufactured for clinical trials in both the malaria and tuberculosis vaccine clinical programmes.