THE ISI ANNUAL AWARD FOR IMMUNOLOGY
Each year the ISI present the "ISI Annual Award for Immunology" to an outstanding Irish immunologist in recognition of their major contribution to the understanding of immunology and health improvement.
The award, which alternates between an immunologist based in Ireland and an Irish immunologist based abroad, is presented to the recipient at the beginning of their public lecture.
The annual public lecture also marks part of the ISI’s contribution to the European Day of Immunology, as organized by the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS).
The annual public lecture, as organised by the ISI, is given under the auspices of an ISI/Irish Times lecture. Each year, presentation of the recipient with the ISI Public Lecture Award Medal is followed by a lecture by the recipient and a Q&A session.
Prof Teresa Lambe OBE
Calleva Head of Vaccine Immunology and
Professor of Vaccinology & Immunology
University of Oxford
About Prof Lambe
Professor Teresa Lambe OBE - is the Calleva Head of Vaccine Immunology and a Professor of Vaccinology & Immunology at the University of Oxford. She is leading a research group which improves human health by controlling disease through vaccination – stopping epidemics before they become pandemics.
Prof. Lambe is one of the Principal Investigators overseeing the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine programme; she co-designed the vaccine in January 2020, led the preclinical studies, and then oversaw the delivery of the immune results needed to support regulatory approval in late 2020. The vaccine has played a pivotal role in the fight against COVID-19 – estimated to have saved >6 million lives globally. Prof. Lambe was appointed as an honorary OBE for her services to Sciences and Public Health in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours and received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad in 2022.
Prof. Lambe’s group are particularly interested in delineating the protective immune response post infection and using these findings to rationally design vaccination strategies to prevent disease. The establishment of long-lived immunity, post vaccination, is also critically important in protecting against infectious disease and is a key focus of the research. The Lambe group is currently developing and testing vaccines against a number of outbreak pathogens including Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus, Ebola virus, Marburg virus Disease and Coronaviruses. A number of these vaccines have progressed to clinical trial assessment, including a vaccine against Ebola virus diseases (ChAdOx1 biEBOV); in late 2022, this vaccine was one of three chosen by the WHO to be included in a ring vaccination protocol against the Sudan ebolavirus outbreak in Uganda. In 2023, the team's candidate vaccine against Marburg virus disease was selected by WHO for inclusion in trials to combat Marburg virus disease.
