Professor Nigel Cunliffe BSc (Hons) MBChB PhD MRCP FRCPath FRCPCH FHEA DTM&H

Personal Statement

Nigel Cunliffe is Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Liverpool. He is Director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Gastrointestinal Infections, and Director of the NIHR Global Health Research Group in Gastrointestinal Infections. He is an active clinician, working as Honorary Consultant Microbiologist, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. Following graduation from the University of Manchester Medical School in 1988, Nigel trained as a clinical microbiologist in Edinburgh and Liverpool and obtained his PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2001. His research addresses the epidemiology and prevention of diarrhoeal disease in children. Since the award in 1996 of a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship in Clinical Tropical Medicine, Nigel has led a long-term programme of rotavirus research in children in Malawi. He led a pivotal, Phase III clinical trial of human rotavirus vaccine which informed a global rotavirus vaccine recommendation by WHO, and he demonstrated for the first time from a low income country that rotavirus vaccination reduces diarrhoea deaths in children. He is a member of the international ROTA Council which provides the scientific evidence that policymakers need to accelerate the global introduction of rotavirus vaccines. Nigel has written multiple Cochrane reviews of rotavirus vaccines and has served on national and international advisory committees on rotavirus vaccines. His work has been published in leading medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Infectious Diseases and Lancet Global Health. In 2022 he received an NIHR Senior Investigator Award.