Joanne Webster

After gaining a double First-class BSc hons, Joanne’s Doctoral (DPhil) research at the University of Oxford focused on the epidemiology of zoonotic disease within the UK, including initiating novel work on the impact of Toxoplasma gondii on host behaviour and its association with chronic disease across both humans and animals.  After a year working as a Clinical Scientist at the NHS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC), specialising in congenital syphilis amongst babies born in the UK, Joanne returned to the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral Fellow, EPA Cephalosporin Junior Research Fellow (JRF), Lecturer in Infectious Diseases and as a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF).  During this period, Joanne expanded the scope of her work to encompass global health and tropical field research and disease control across much of Africa and Asia. Joanne accepted a Readership at Imperial College’s Faculty of Medicine in 2003 and was rapidly promoted to a tenured Professorial Chair in Infectious Diseases in 2006.  The key motivation for this move was the unique opportunity to be co-Director of the then newly formed Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). During this period (2003-2014), these activities provided approximately 300 million anthelminthic preventative chemotherapeutic treatments for children and at-risk adults across sub-Saharan Africa, and were awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize and Medal for International Public Health Impact. SCI was also listed as the top UK charity by ‘Giving what we can’ and in the top two International charities by ‘Give Well’.   In 2013, Joanne became Associate Director of the then newly formed London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research (LCNTDR), a joint initiative between Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, Royal Veterinary College, University of London (RVC), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and the Natural History Museum (NHM), to undertake evidence-based research around the design, implementation and evaluation of NTD control and elimination programmes.  In October 2014, Joanne joined the RVC as their Chair in Parasitic Diseases (whilst retaining her Chair (as Hon) in Infectious Diseases at Imperial) to further expand her One Health research and disease control activities encompassing both human clinical and animal veterinary tropical medicine. Joanne serves as Director of the RVC’s Centre for Emerging, Endemic and Exotic Diseases (CEEED) and Head’s their Pathogen Flow in Ecosystems strategic grouping.