Professor Alison Holmes OBE FMedSci

Personal Statement

Professor Holmes is the David Price Evans Chair of Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of Liverpool and the past President of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

She is an NIHR Senior Investigator and is an infectious diseases physician by background, with an extensive clinical track record in infectious diseases management, including a clinical fellowship in Boston early in her career. She has longstanding experience in NHS leadership roles, particularly in addressing the prevention of infection and the improving the use of antimicrobials.

She has served in multiple national roles. These include serving as a Department of Health’s national expert clinical adviser, as a member of the Governmental Expert Advisory Committee on AMR and Healthcare Associated Infection for nine years and as a national expert witness for Parliamentary Health and Science and Technology Committees. In addition to serving on a variety of research funding panels and scientific advisory boards She is the past Chair of the Fleming Fund’s Technical Advisory Group (Department of Health and Social Care). She is also a former Board Member of the Wellcome Trust’s Surveillance & Epidemiology of Drug-resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helmholtz Association. She serves on WHO Expert groups related to antimicrobial use, AMR, infection prevention, sepsis, and COVID-19. She is the Director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infections and AMR and the Centre for Antimicrobial Optimisation (CAMO) at Imperial College London and in 2021 she was awarded an OBE for services to medicine and infectious diseases.

She leads a large international, multidisciplinary infectious disease research programme, including collaborative programmes funded by NIHR, ESRC, UKRI and the Wellcome Trust on the improved management and prevention of infections globally, particularly focusing on the optimising of antimicrobial use through better use of data, infection prevention, the integration of social sciences, the development and application of innovative approaches and technologies for improved diagnostics, precision medicine and clinical outcomes.