Hannah Shrader

Hannah Shrader is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford’s Vaccine Group (OVG), supervised by Daniela Ferreira, Elena Mitsi, and Teresa Lambe. Her research focuses on understanding how human airway immunity differs after natural infection, human challenge model infection, intranasal vaccination, or intramuscular vaccination. By analysing samples from ongoing and past clinical studies, she investigates which immune responses last the longest, how they are recalled after reinfection or vaccination, and which immune targets may most effectively inform the design of mucosal vaccines against current and future respiratory pathogens.

Hannah serves as the laboratory lead for the MUCOSAL Study at the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology & Tropical Medicine (CCVTM). This study explores how infections such as COVID-19, influenza, and common cold viruses activate the body’s defences in the nose, lungs, and blood. By studying human respiratory mucosa samples, MUCOSAL provides a unique window into how the entire human respiratory immune system remembers and responds to pathogens, with the goal of guiding the design of next-generation vaccines.

Before coming to Oxford, Hannah was a research fellow at the NIH Vaccine Research Center (NIAID) under the supervision of John Mascola, Amar Pegu, and Richard Koup, where she studied how HIV develops resistance to broadly neutralising antibodies in NHP models. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Biochemistry and Medical Anthropology from the University of Iowa, as well as a minor in Clinical and Translational Science. As an undergraduate, she investigated the gut microbiome’s impact on pancreatic cancer treatment outcomes. Her early projects spanned cancer biology, microbiology, and virology, laying the foundation for her current focus in mucosal immunology.

Through her doctoral studies, Hannah is working to advance understanding of human respiratory immunity and contribute to the development of more effective vaccines against future respiratory pathogen threats.