David Goldblatt - Biography#

David Goldblatt is Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology and Head of the Immunobiology Section at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London (UCL) where he also holds the role of Institute Deputy Director for NHS Engagement. He is a Consultant Paediatric Immunologist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) where he is also Director of Clinical Research and Development and Director of the National Institute for Health Research GOSH/UCL Biomedical Research Centre. 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 was awarded NIHR Senior Investigator status in 2012 which was renewed in 2016.

He has a long-standing interest in the immune response to vaccines and infectious diseases. He has an active research programme studying bacterial conjugate vaccines in the young and the elderly, the ontogeny of the immune response to bacterial carriage and infection, evaluation of functional immunity to S. pneumoniae proteins, the development of new pneumococcal vaccines and the development of functional assays for evaluating immunity to bacterial candidate vaccines.

He served as a member of the United Kingdom Department of Health Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI) for 10 years (1997-2007), currently contributes to two JCVI subcommittees and has served as a member of both the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust funding panels. He is currently a member of the Wellcome Trust’s 'Immune System in Health and Disease' Expert Review Group.

He is a regular advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on vaccines and is Director of the WHO Reference Laboratory for Pneumococcal Serology based at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health in London. He serves on subcommittees of the United Kingdom Department of Health Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised the US FDA and EMA on vaccine evaluation and has served as a member of MRC, Wellcome Trust and US NIH funding panels.