Christl Donnelly


Christl Ann Donnelly is an epidemiologist who was appointed professor of applied statistics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford. She is also professor of statistical epidemiology at Imperial College London. She is associate director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis. In 2022, Donnelly was appointed Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford.

Education

Donnelly was educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988, and at Harvard University in Boston, where in 1992 she was awarded Master of Science and Doctor of Science degrees in biostatistics supervised by Nan Laird and James H. Ware.

Career and research

Donnelly's research investigates statistical and biomathematical methods to analyse epidemiological patterns of infectious diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019, Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, and Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, the Ebola virus disease, zoonoses and HIV/AIDS. She has interests in ecology, conservation, and animal welfare having worked on bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, bovine tuberculosis and policies regarding badger culling in the United Kingdom.

Awards and honours

Donnelly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours.
In 2016 Donnelly won the Suffrage Science award and in 2018 nominated at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.