Ian Feavers

Ian Feavers, PhD is currently an emeritus senior research associate with Martin Maiden’s group at the University of Oxford. He studied for his PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and, following periods of postdoctoral research at the University of Sheffield and the Friedrich Miescher Institut in Basel, moved to the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC, part of the MHRA) in the UK. At NIBSC he was Head of the Division of Bacteriology for ten years prior to his retirement in September 2019. During the late 1990s, when new polysaccharide conjugate vaccines were being introduced, he headed the laboratory responsible for the control and standardisation of meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. At NIBSC his research focused on the antigenic diversity and population biology of the meningococcus. He collaborated on the development of the MLST approach to bacterial genotyping and continues to contribute to research on the molecular genetics and immunology of meningococcal antigens. Because of his broad experience of bacterial vaccines and molecular biology, he has been closely involved with several meningococcal vaccine developments. Whilst at NIBSC he served as the institute’s representative on the Vaccine Working Party of the EMA and as an observer at JCVI in the UK. He is currently a member of the WHO’s Expert Committee on Biological Standardisation and has served as the rapporteur for its meetings since 2019. Throughout his career he has regularly contributed to the development of WHO guidelines.