Olly Hamilton is a medical doctor specialising in Intensive Care and currently studying for a PhD in respiratory infection.

He has been a Registrar in Intensive Care Medicine in the North West for five years, having previously worked in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh. Olly started working in clinical research during the COVID-19 pandemic where he was involved in enrolling critically ill people in large trials to find the best way to treat them. From there, he was awarded a prestigious National Institute for Health and Care Research Academic Clinical Fellowship before joining the Liverpool Vaccine Group to study for a PhD.

Olly’s PhD is focussed on controlled human infection models. These models involve taking carefully selected volunteers and exposing them to an infectious pathogen. This is usually done to test new vaccines in a very time and cost-efficient way but may also be used to better understand how some infections take hold. His PhD is investigating the interplay between two common respiratory infections, streptococcus pneumoniae and respiratory syncytial virus, using a controlled human infection model. He is examining whether the presence of respiratory syncytial virus increases the likelihood of catching or passing on the pneumonia bacteria. This is the first time a controlled human infection model has ever used two different pathogens at the same time.

Olly has also led on several other studies, including on abnormal blood clotting in COVID-19, invasive fungal infections, and antimicrobial stewardship in the ICU.