Professor Faith Osier has accepted appointment as Co-Director of the Institute of Infection, with effect from 1 June 2022 for a period of 5 years. Professor Osier will also be Chair in Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology in the Department of Life Sciences.
As Co-Director, alongside existing Co-Director Professor Charles Bangham, Professor Osier will lead on implementing the Institute’s long-term strategic vision to build and enable interdisciplinary research programmes and activities to tackle emerging and longstanding issues in infectious diseases.
Professor Osier is currently the Executive Director of the IAVI (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) Human Immunology Laboratory, located within the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and Principal Research Fellow in Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine. She is also Visiting Professor of Malaria Immunology at the University of Oxford and serves as the President of the International Union of Immunological Societies.
Professor Osier’s research aims to make malaria history through the development of highly effective vaccines. It builds on the observation that humans can acquire immunity to malaria and that the passive transfer of malaria-specific immunoglobulins is curative. Her teams dissect the molecular characteristics of the protective immune response against malaria in population studies in Africa and using the controlled human malaria infection platform.