Dr Alasdair Bamford

Alasdair Bamford is a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Research Training Fellow.

His main areas of research include paediatric HIV immunology, pneumococcal immunity, international child health, vaccinology and tuberculosis diagnostics.

Having studied undergraduate medicine at University of Cambridge and University College London, he then proceeded to train and work in London as a Paediatrician. In 2008 he was competitively awarded an NIHR Research Training Fellowship. This provides full funding for his PhD project which is investigating the effect of T cell dysfunction on B cell memory in HIV infected children, specifically in relation to responses to pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

This translational project is currently under way and is involving patients from one of the largest centres for paediatric HIV care in the UK based at St Mary's Hospital, London. It is a collaboration between Dr Beate Kampmann's group in the Section of Paediatrics at Imperial College, Dr Peter Kelleher's group based in the Immunology Section of Imperial College and Prof David Golblatt's group in the Immunobiology Unit at the Institute of Child Health.

He has also worked as a paediatric advisor to the EPICS trial, a collaboration between a group of academic economists (Effective Intervention) based at the London School of Economics and the London School of Tropical Medicine. This large scale clinical trial is investigating the potential impact of a variety of public health interventions on the mortality of children under 5 in Guinea Bissau. 

He is a member of the UK Paediatric Vaccine Group (UKPVG), Children's HIV Association (CHIVA), British Paediatric Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Disease Group (BPAIIG) and European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID). He was recently appointed as a Trainee Representative in the London School of Paediatrics (Academic, Research and Subspecialties subgroup).