We are on the brink of something remarkable. The virus that I have been working on for 21 years (and that others have been studying for considerably longer) is about to have not one, but three vaccines. The virus is Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which is a cause of severe disease at both ends of life – putting both babies and the elderly...

Despite SARS-CoV-2 taking the limelight for the last 4 years, Influenza virus continues to be a significant threat to human health. It poses a number of threats to our health and wellbeing. These fall into three categories: seasonal, pandemic and zoonoses. 1.       Seasonal influenza. Lockdown type interventions (sometimes called NPI or non-pharmaceutical...

 In which I got to say Shit in Times Higher Education (first published there 2023)The editor has allowed me 800 words to give you the secret to academic happiness, but I can sum it up in eight: stop giving a shit about every little thing. To be honest, it doesn’t even need the “about every little thing”. But I should probably expand a bit, and not...

Originally published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00528-w And... the first to openly use AI to write a Nature article ChatGPT may not yet give us sparkling prose and only delivered “generic fluff” when it asked to write grant application text by John Tregoning. But it can      free scientists up to focus on more stimulating...

 In early March 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic a surprising-sounding experiment was taking place. Researchers at Imperial College London and Oxford University in partnership with hVIVO were deliberately infecting healthy volunteers with SARS-CoV-2. This was in fact the latest in a long line of controlled human infection studies – where...

Originally published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03216-3Is the stream of negativity around academia putting people off? It’s no secret that an academic career has many challenges, short-term contracts, low pay, long hours – as well as in the uncertain, exploratory nature of science. And they don’t go away with tenure:...