Katie J. Ewer

Katie Jane Ewer is a British immunologist and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute.

Early life and education When she did not get into medical school, Ewer pursued a career in biomedical science and became interested in infectious diseases. She was interested in a career in biology for she was "fascinated by seemingly endless processes that occur in our cells and organs every second of our lives without us knowing about it. She then began working as a biomedical scientist at the microbiology department of the John Radcliffe Hospital in 2000, before pursuing a PhD on the immunology of tuberculosis (TB).

In 2008, Ewer became a Senior Immunologist at Oxford University's Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research. The aim of her research was to define vaccine-induced immunological parameters that correlate with protection from malaria and understand why vaccines do not always work as well as expected. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led clinical controlled trials in an effort to find a vaccine, which was published in a 2020 study titled Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2: a preliminary report of a phase 1/2, single-blind, randomised controlled trial.