Wednesday 15 October 2025

Professor Daniela Ferreira at the Forefront of Major New AI Vaccine Initiative

Professor Daniela Ferreira, Keble Fellow by Special Election and Deputy Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, is co-leading an ambitious new programme of vaccine research backed by £118 million in funding from the University’s partnership with the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT).

The newly launched Correlates of Immunity-Artificial Intelligence (CoI-AI) project brings together Oxford’s leading vaccine science and human challenge models with cutting-edge AI innovation technology from EIT to probe how the body fights infection and how vaccines can be optimally designed.

Professor Ferreira commented: “This programme will give us completely new tools to study how vaccines work at both a cellular and system-wide level, by studying infections in real time, in people, and using smart immunology tools and data to find the answers. This will open up whole new avenues to vaccine design as we improve our understanding of infection and immunity.”

CoI-AI will focus on pathogens such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and E. coli, which cause widespread illness and have historically proven challenging for vaccine development. Using AI to pinpoint the immune responses that predict protection, the programme aims to revolutionise how vaccines are designed, tested and understood.

More information is available on the Oxford Vaccine Group website.