Personal information
Biography
David Goldblatt is Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology at the University College London's (UCL) GOS Institute of Child Health and a Consultant Paediatric Immunologist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH). He was the GOSH Director of Clinical Research and Development from 2003 to 2023 and the Inaugural Director of the National Institute for Health Research GOSH/UCL Biomedical Research Centre from 2007 till 2017. He was Deputy Director of the GOS UCL ICH from 2015 to 2023. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, his Paediatric qualifications from the Royal College of Physicians (London) and a PhD in Immunology from the University of London, United Kingdom.
He has a long-standing interest in the immune response to vaccines and infectious diseases. He has active research programmes exploring immunity to colonisation/ carriage and infection, correlates of protection and assessing alternative vaccines schedules. His laboratory (a WHO Reference Laboratory for Pneumococcal Serology) interests include Streptococcus Pneumoniae, Klebsiella Pneumonia, Group A and B Streptococcus and SARS-CoV-2. He is an advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on vaccines including COVID and Co-chairs the recently formed WHO Technical Advisory Group on Group B Streptococcus. He serves on subcommittees of the United Kingdom Department of Health Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI), has advised the MHRA on COVID Vaccine licensure via membership of the Commission on Human Medicines COVID-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group. He chairs several Scientific Advisory Boards including the International SAB advising the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre and the Immunisation HPRU at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has just finished a 6 year term as President of the International Society of Pneumonia and Pneumococcal Disease.