Alison Holmes

Alison Holmes is a Professor of Infectious Diseases and the Director of both the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infections and AMR and the Centre for Antimicrobial Optimisation (CAMO), at Imperial College London. She leads a large multidisciplinary infectious disease research program focusing on antimicrobial resistance, epidemiology, public health, precision medicine, and the development of emerging, innovative technologies to address infection prevention and management, antibiotic optimization, and AMR nationally and globally. She leads an ESRC international program with collaborators in India and South Africa, as well as Wellcome Trust-funded projects led by colleagues in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and collaborators in Vietnam and Thailand.

Professor Holmes is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an NIHR Senior Investigator, and an Infectious Disease consultant within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Until June 2021, she was also the Associate Medical Director, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the Trust. Throughout her longstanding clinical and research career, Professor Holmes has conducted clinically applied research that influences local, national, and international practice. She served as an expert member of the Governmental Advisory Committee on AMR and Healthcare Associated Infection for nine years and as a national expert witness for Parliamentary Health and Science and Technology Committees.

Professor Holmes is the current President of the International Society for Infectious Diseases and serves on a variety of WHO Expert groups related to antimicrobial use, AMR, infection prevention, and sepsis. In addition to her role as chair or advisor for numerous international scientific advisory boards, funding panels, and editorial boards she is the outgoing Chair of the Fleming Fund’s Technical Advisory Group (Department of Health and Social Care), a former Board Member of the Wellcome Trust’s Surveillance & Epidemiology of Drug-resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC) and has recently joined the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Holmes has contributed to national COVID-19 responses through the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Hospital Onset COVID-19 working group and her research group’s work in this field. She has also been active in the international responses through her roles with WHO on WHO COVID panels including the WHO R&D Expert Advisory Group for COVID-19 and the WHO Health Emergencies Program (WHE) Ad-Hoc Advisory Panel of Infection Prevention and Control Experts for Preparedness, Readiness, and Response to COVID-19 (WHE-IPC-AP).