Prof. Katie Flanagan University of Tasmania, Australia

The Launceston General Hospital’s Head of Infectious Diseases, Professor Katie Flanagan is a clinical scientist who has worked on global health issues for more than 20 years.... read more

Professor Flanagan trained in undergraduate medicine at the University of Oxford and in London, United Kingdom. She has since led numerous vaccine immunology trials throughout the world, including trials of novel malaria and HIV vaccines in Africa, and trials of the immunological effects of commonly used vaccines in the young and elderly.

In 2011 she moved to Tasmania, where she set up the Clinical Infectious Disease service at the Launceston General Hospital. In 2016 she also established the Tasmanian Vaccine Trial Centre, conducting vaccine and infectious disease trials in the state’s North.

She remains at the forefront of Australia’s fight against COVID-19, as member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. She also helped lead the Australasian COVID-19 Trial, known as ASCOT, testing the effectiveness of HIV medication lopinavir-ritonavir, and malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, in treating patients hospitalised with coronavirus.

Most recently Professor Flanagan was awarded $360,000 from the Clifford Craig Foundation for the COVULPOP study, which will quantify and compare vaccine-induced humoral and cellular immune responses to COVID-19 vaccination between pregnant women and the elderly.