Harish Nair

Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health

Biography

Background

Trained in clinical Paediatrics and Epidemiology, Professor Harish Nair leads the Respiratory Viral Epidemiology research programme at the University of Edinburgh. He has led several large collaborative projects on global child health and infectious diseases. He currently leads (and is the co-ordinator of) the REspiratory Syncytial virus Consortium in EUrope (RESCEU) and the RSV Global Epidemiology Network (RSV GEN). He is a co-founder of ReSViNET. 

RESCEU

ReSViNet

Undergraduate teaching

Professor Nair is involved in supervision of MBChB Student Selected Component (SSC) year 5 projects. He also supervises 1-2 MBChB students doing an intercalated degree in Epidemiology and Global Health. Students are generally offered projects that are part of the large research programme that he leads. He generally encourages all his students to take their work to publication and indeed most of his students have published in leading peer-reviewed journals. He also encourages and facilitate his students to do an internship with WHO. Previous students have found these opportunities to be very exciting and have managed to publish manuscripts based on their work at WHO.

Postgraduate teaching

Professor Nair leads the course titled “Epidemiology for Public Health” within the Master of Public Health (MPH) curriculum. He also lectures on the “Global Health Epidemiology” course. He supervises (on an average 2) MPH student dissertations every year.

Professor Nair is currently supervising 6 PhD students in Edinburgh on various topics related to his research interests – viral respiratory infections (2 students); refugee health (3 students); and gender inequities in child health (1 student). He is also co-supervising 2 PhD student projects on viral respiratory infections outwith Edinburgh.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Research summary

Professor Nair is both medically and scientifically trained (MBBS from Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi in India and PhD from University of Edinburgh). His research focuses on child pneumonia. He has received more than £31 million in grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, European Commission, World Health Organisation, UNICEF and Sanofi Pasteur.

He has led studies that reported the first and most widely cited disaese burden estimates for RSV and influenza related child pneumonia. Apart from his main interest in child pneumonia epidemiology, he has a strong interest in refugee health and gender inequities in child health and has contributed to internationaly leading resarch on neonatal health, maternal health and health sector reforms.

Project activity

Professor Harish Nair’s projects include work on child pneumonia, RSV, influenza and other infectious diseases like pneumococcus, meningococcus and Clostridium difficile.

Project list on Edinburgh Research Explorer

View all 101 publications on Research Explorer

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