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.