Jenner Day

Jenner Day is a yearly celebration of infection and immunity research in honour of one of City St George's, School of Health & Medical Sciences most famous alumni, the vaccinologist Edward Jenner.

At each meeting, investigators from the Institute for Infection and Immunity at City St George’s welcome friends and colleagues from across London, particularly from our major research partners (St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), other universities, UK Health Security Agency, the National Institute of Biological Standards and Controls, the Pirbright Institute, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

Presentations from researchers at City St George’s and invited colleagues cover a range of topics in academic and clinical sciences. These presentations feature work on major human bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal pathogens and highlight our range of research interests; from molecular biology to systems biology, and from diagnostics to therapy and vaccines.

A highpoint of each meeting is the keynote Jenner Lecture, given by a distinguished speaker, whose work has had a major global health impact.

Jenner Day 2025

Jenner Day 2025 will be held on Wednesday 1 October 2025 and it's open to all staff and students.

Jenner Day 2025 will be held on Wednesday 1st October 2025. The Jenner Lecture will be Professor Wendy Barclay who is the Regius Chair of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London. The title of her talk is: “Towards predicting and preventing Influenza pandemics”.

About the speaker

After graduating from Cambridge University, Wendy’s postgraduate study involved human challenge studies, deliberating infecting volunteers with common cold viruses at the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury. During postdoctoral appointments at the University of Reading and then Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, she learned the molecular virology skills to genetically manipulate both positive (poliovirus)  and negative strand (influenza) RNA viruses. In 1995 she returned to the UK and set up her research group to study influenza viruses.  In May 2007 she moved to Imperial College London where she is now the Head of Department of Infectious Disease.

Her research has been focussed on the mechanisms by which viruses cross from animal sources into humans to cause new pandemics, and strategies to prevent and control pandemic emergence.

During the COVID pandemic Wendy was a member of NERVTAG and SAGE, advising the UK government around the science of the newly emerged coronavirus.  She was awarded a CBE for services to virology in the New Years Honours list 2022.

Learn more and register here.