Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine - questions and answers session

Speaker: Dr Adam Ritchie (Jenner Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford)

Talk: Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine - questions and answers session

Time: 29 January 2021, 9:00 am

Venue: Online in the "IFB seminars" group of MS Teams. Group password: ypidr3d.

Dr Ritchie completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Microbiology and Immunology (2001) and PhD in Immunology (2005), both at the University of New South Wales in Australia. His doctoral research involved investigation of modulation of immune responses by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. After his PhD, he moved to the University of Oxford, working as a postdoctoral researcher in infection risk of blood products, which focused on malaria and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Then, he followed with a post-doctoral research position in HIV/AIDS immunology at the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford as part of the Centre for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) consortium (2008-2012). During the time he coordinated the CHAVI002 study into individuals resistant to HIV infection in cohorts in the UK and Uganda.

From 2011 to 2017 Dr Ritchie was the Lecturer in Science and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, a new department at Oxford that he helped establish. Here he taught public policy students and policy makers how to work with scientific evidence, including preparing for and responding to pandemics.

Currently, he is working at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford as a Senior Project Manager in Vaccine Development and is part of the Oxford COVID Vaccine Trial Group. Initially working on Rabies vaccine from 2017, he set up and manages phase I clinical trials for this vaccine in the UK and Tanzania. In 2020 his role changed due to the pandemic; he was instrumental in developing and delivering the manufacturing process for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. This included setting up the Manufacturing consortium now producing the vaccine under licence with AstraZeneca, obtaining a UK government commitment of £65 million support for manufacturing, and managing £15 million of that budget.

Dr Ritchie is also actively involved in multiple non-research roles at Oxford, including as the Senior Admissions Adviser for Blavatnik School of Government, and as a Lecturer in Human Science at St Catherine’s College. He holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at the University of Oxford and the Higher Education Academy (2013). He is a Senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and received the St Bonaventure University Medal of Honor (2012) and University of Oxford Teaching Excellence Award (2013) for his contributions to education.

Dr Ritchie has co-authored work published by Journal of Virology, Vaccine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Retrovirology, Infection and Immunity, etc. His most recent work focusing on the COVID19 vaccine resulted in multiple papers published in The Lancet and Nature Medicine.