Katie Ewer

Dr Ewer is a Senior Immunologist at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and she leads a program of exploratory immunology studying vaccine-induced immunity to malaria and emerging pathogens, such as Ebola. Her doctoral thesis looked at T cell responses to tuberculosis and work during her PhD led to the production of a new blood test for diagnosing TB infection, which is widely used clinically. After this, she applied the same technology to diagnosing bovine tuberculosis and studied vaccine-induced correlates of protection in a bovine TB model. Her research interests now focus on T cell responses to malaria induced by vaccination with viral vectors and in 2013, she reported the first CD8+ T cell mediated-correlate of protection induced by vaccination. Assessing immunity induced by viral vectored vaccines has led to vaccine trials in several developing countries including The Gambia, Dakar and Burkina Faso and her team collaborate with local scientists to assess immunogenicity in malaria-exposed cohorts and age de-escalation studies.