Professor Neil French

Professor of Infectious Diseases and Global Health
Clinical Infection, Microbiology, and Immunology
University of Liverpool
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Neil French is currently Head of the department of Clinical Infection, Microbiology and Immunology. He is also an honorary consultant in Infectious diseases at the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust. He graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. His research career began when he spent 5 years at the Medical Research Council programme on AIDS in Uganda studying HIV. This was where his major interest in vaccines emerged, studying the efficacy of pneumococcal polysaccharide in HIV-infected adults. He subsequently went on to complete specialist training in Infectious Diseases and general medicine in Liverpool, secured a Wellcome Trust Career development fellowship and returned to Africa spending 5 year at the Wellcome trust Major overseas programme in Blantyre Malawi and subsequently 5 years as Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's site in Karonga Northern Malawi. The interest in pneumococcal disease and HIV has persisted but work on vaccines has grown to include studies on Group A & B streptococcus, rotavirus and most recently zikavirus vaccines. On returning to Liverpool in 2012 Prof French worked to consolidate the vaccine research activities within Liverpool and with colleagues established the Centre for Global Vaccine Research, which he now directs. This incorporates a multidisciplinary team of scientists working on vaccines for humans and animals. The centre can take vaccine concepts from basic epidemiology, immunology and microbial characterisation, through development of candidates to clinical trials evaluation in the UK and internationally. The centre has experience of working on several vaccine technologies, has established in vivo models and links to manufacturing. He continues to work in Malawi and is a senior investigator at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Laboratories, Blantyre, Malawi. He sits on the Wellcome Trust ERG4 panel, provides technical support to the WHO on pneumococcal vaccines, sits on the JCVI pneumococcal sub-committee and is a member and chairman of several international Data Monitoring Boards for vaccine trials.