Professor Harish Nair
Job Title
Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health, Co-Head of Centre for Global Health
Building (Address)
Usher InstituteStreet (Address)
Old Medical School, Teviot PlaceCity (Address)
EdinburghCountry (Address)
UKPost code (Address)
EH8 9AGProfile
Professor Harish Nair is co-Director of Centre for Global Health as well as co-Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training at the University of Edinburgh. He is Chair of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the Edinburgh Medical School and leads the Respiratory Viral Epidemiology Research Group at the University of Edinburgh. He has led several large collaborative projects on global child health and infectious diseases and has raised over £62 million in research grant income and has published over 230 articles, 46 of them in high impact factor journals.
He currently leads (and is the coordinator of) the REspiratory Syncytial virus Consortium in EUrope (RESCEU) (http://resc-eu.org/) and Preparing for RSV Immunization and Surveillance in Europe (PROMISE) (https://imi-promise.eu/). He leads the Respiratory Virus Global Epidemiology Network (RSV GEN) which has developed the previous and current paediatric global all-cause and cause-specific viral (RSV, Influenza, human meta-pneumovirus and parainfluenza virus) pneumonia morbidity and mortality estimates.
Prof Nair is an adviser to the World Health Organisation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and a founding board member of ResViNET. He is a member of the WHO SAGE working group on RSV and the RSV subcommittee for Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Faculty of Public Health (UK). He is also the Regional Editor of the Journal of Global Health and member of several international scientific advisory boards for ongoing studies on RSV.
In 2019, he was awarded the Principal’s Medal for Exceptional Service by the University of Edinburgh and the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) award for his contribution to global public health in 2020. He is a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate 2021-2023) and received the Barney Graham Award for contribution to RSV Research in 2021.