Testing times: modelling the impact of alternative testing strategies on the COVID-19 pandemic (ID Epi Seminar Series)

Presented by Dr. Nicholas Grassly, Professor in the Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. Register for the event here.

Dr. Grassly is interested in the individual immune response to vaccination – particularly for enteric infections such as enteroviruses (including poliovirus) and rotavirus – and how this translates to impact at the population level. Inevitably he is also working on the epidemiology of COVID-19, including testing and vaccination strategies, and is a member of the WHO SAGE COVID-19 vaccines working group and UK SAGE SPI-M. His research group conduct both laboratory and population studies, including clinical trials, with collaborators in the UK, Zambia, Malawi, Pakistan and India. A strength of his group is the development and use of rigorous statistical methods and mathematical models to analyse study data. His group is the WHO collaborating institute on polio data analysis and modelling.

He studied biology at Oxford University, trained in epidemiology at Imperial College London and learnt mathematics with the Open University. He was a Royal Society URF (2004-2011) and then Professor at Imperial College London (2011-present). He has served on various boards and committees, including the MRC Infections and Immunity Board (2012-16), the WHO SAGE polio group (2008-2020) and WHO SAGE COVID-19 vaccines working group (2020-). He teaches on the MSc (Epidemiology), MPH and undergraduate biomedical courses at Imperial College London. His work is funded by the MRC, Wellcome Trust, Royal Society, WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Current research topics: Epidemiology of polio eradication and endgame strategy; Rapid diagnostics and nanopore sequencing for poliovirus surveillance; Epidemiology and evolution of non-polio enteroviruses; causes of oral vaccine failure (rotavirus and poliovirus); Human infection challenge with live-attenuated vaccines; Typhoid epidemiology.

Recommended reading:

• Grassly NC, Pons-Salort M, Parker EPK, White PJ, Ferguson NM; Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. Comparison of molecular testing strategies for COVID-19 control: a mathematical modelling study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 Dec;20(12):1381-1389. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30630-7. Epub 2020 Aug 18. PMID: 32822577; PMCID: PMC7434438.