Christl Donnelly is a statistician and epidemiologist studying the spread and control of infectious diseases, with a particular interest in outbreaks. She studied mathematics (BA) at Oberlin College and biostatistics (MSc, ScD) at Harvard School of Public Health, graduating in 1992. Following a lecturer position at University of Edinburgh (1992-95), she joined the Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at University of Oxford (1995-00). Since 2000, she has worked at Imperial College London.
Christl has studied Zika virus, Ebola, MERS, influenza, SARS, bovine TB, foot-and-mouth disease, rabies, cholera, dengue, BSE/vCJD, malaria and HIV/AIDS. She is a leading member of the WHO Ebola Response Team (2014-). She was also deputy chair of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (1998-2007) which designed, oversaw and analysed the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. In addition to epidemiology and disease control, she is interested in conservation and animal welfare. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. In 2002, she won the Franco-British prize for scientific research from the Académie des Sciences in Paris.
Professional positions
Head of Department and Professor of Applied Statistics, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford Professor of Statistical Epidemiology, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London