Professor Nigel Curtis

Professor Nigel Curtis is a paediatric infectious diseases physician and clinician scientist. He is the leader of the Infectious Diseases Research Group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Melbourne and Head of Infectious Diseases at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne.

Prof Curtis did his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Cambridge and clinical training at St Mary's Medical School, University of London. He undertook his laboratory training at Imperial College London St Mary's Campus, where he completed a PhD investigating the role of bacterial superantigen toxins in Kawasaki disease and in staphylococcal and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. His specialist training in infectious diseases included working at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and a Fellowship at the British Columbia Children's Hospital. He has also worked for periods in The Gambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Prof Curtis' research focuses on improving the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infectious diseases in children, combining clinical research and trials with laboratory immunology studies. His current research interests focus on the innate and cellular immune response to BCG vaccine, as well as the immunodiagnosis of childhood TB (or not TB). He leads a multidisciplinary research team comprising clinicians, research nurses, laboratory scientists, PhD and other students.

He is the recipient of an NHMRC Investigator Award and has been an investigator on grants totalling more than thirty-five million dollars. He has published more than 360 papers.

He has been the lead investigator on numerous trials including The MIS BAIR Trial, a randomised controlled trial of neonatal BCG vaccination to investigate the immunomodulatory heterologous ('non-specific') effects of this vaccine, including its ability to prevent infections, allergic disease and asthma.

He is the Chief Principal Investigator of The BRACE Trial, a randomised controlled trial of BCG vaccination to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare workers that is recruiting over 10,000 participants in three continents worldwide.

You can follow his tweets at @nigeltwitt.