Katie Ewer
Katie Jane Ewer is a British cellular immunologist. She is an associate professor and Senior Immunologist at the Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research and Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine. Early life and education. Growing up, Ewer was interested in pursuing 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 earned an undergraduate degree in biomedical science, which included a year of microbiology training, before being rejected from medical school. She began working as a biomedical scientist  at the microbiology department of the John Radcliffe Hospital in 2000. Having already found a liking for microbiology specializing in infectious diseases, she chose to pursue a PhD on the immunology of tuberculosis (TB). She earned her PhD through Open University as a result of her research with Ajit Lalvani on novel diagnostic tools for tuberculosis. Career. Upon earning her PhD, Ewer joined the UK's Animal and Plant Health Agency where she studied the effectiveness of TB vaccines in cattle and managed the roll-out of interferon-gamma-based diagnosis for bovine TB in the UK herd for the  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. While in this role, she co-published "Diagnosis of tuberculosis in South African children with a T cell-based assay: a prospective cohort study" with Susan Liebeschuetz. In 2008, Ewer became a Senior Immunologist at Oxford University's Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research. While there, she continued to study the effects of TB on populations and led clinical trials in an effort to discover a vaccine for Ebola. 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."