Bryan Thomas Grenfell (born 1954) is a British population biologist and the Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs at the

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Education

Grenfell earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree with honours from

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, and DPhil in biology from the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

in 1981.

Career and research

After his DPhil, Grenfell spent a post-doctoral period at

, with Roy Anderson, before joining the faculty at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

. He moved to the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1990, to the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

in 2004, and then to

in 2009. He has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

(2014-2021). Grenfell's research focuses on the (often non-linear) dynamics and control of infectious diseases in humans and animals. He has used simple epidemiological models and

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Exa ...

analysis to interpret large spatio-temporal datasets, elucidating the spread through time and space of acute infectious pathogens, notably

measles Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...

. In 2004, Grenfell and colleagues coined the term

phylodynamics Viral phylodynamics is defined as the study of how epidemiological, immunological, and evolutionary processes act and potentially interact to shape viral phylogenies. Since the coining of the term in 2004, research on viral phylodynamics has focuse ...

to describe the interaction between pathogen evolutionary dynamics and the dynamics of

epidemics An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time. Epidemics of infectious d ...

. This concept has been widely applied since, for example, in discussing how pathogens evolve in response to host immunity. Grenfell and collaborators have been extensively involved in analyzing the dynamics of the

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a No ...

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...

that began in 2020. In particular, they have focused on the impact of immune life history on the future dynamics of the pandemic and the performance of

vaccination Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating ...

strategies.

Awards and honours

In 1991 Grenfell was awarded a T.H. Huxley Medal from

, and in 1995 the 1995 Scientific Medal of the

Zoological Society of London The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. It was founded in 1826. Since 1828, it has maintained the London Zoo, and since 1931 Whipsnade Park. History On 29 ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2004. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: He has been a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

since 2006, and a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

since 2011. In 2008, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the

. In 2022 he received the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences.Kyoto Prize 2022
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grenfell, Bryan Living people 20th-century British biologists 21st-century British biologists British ecologists British evolutionary biologists Officers of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of Imperial College London Alumni of the University of York Academics of the University of Cambridge Pennsylvania State University faculty Princeton University faculty 1954 births