Rate My Professor Christopher Blyth

Professor Christopher Blyth is Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases in the School of Medicine at the University of Western Australia. He holds the degrees MB BS (Hons), PhD (University of Western Australia, 2016), DCH, FRACP, FRCPA, and FAHMS. Currently, he serves as Head of the Wesfarmers Centre for Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia, Paediatric Infectious Diseases Physician at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Perth Children’s Hospital, and Clinical Microbiologist at PathWest Laboratory Medicine WA, Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre. He established the Department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Perth Children’s Hospital. Blyth is a clinical academic with over twenty years of experience conducting research on paediatric infectious diseases relevant to public policy and clinical practice. He has been supported by NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (2016-2019) and NHMRC EL2 Investigator Grant (2020-2024), serving as chief investigator on grants exceeding A$40 million from sources including Gates Global Health Grant, NIH RO1, and NHMRC.

His research specializations encompass the epidemiology, diagnosis, management, and prevention of childhood infections, with emphasis on influenza, upper and lower respiratory tract infections, pneumonia, respiratory co-infections, emerging viral pathogens, immunisation, and vaccine safety. His PhD thesis, Preventing influenza morbidity in Australian children through vaccination (2016), evaluated the Western Australian preschool influenza vaccination program, significantly influencing national influenza policy. Blyth has produced over 300 peer-reviewed publications, achieving more than 7,800 citations and an h-index of 47, with over 90 as first or senior author. Key publications include Evaluating the effectiveness of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and clinical and demographic characteristics on pneumococcal carriage density in young children in Papua New Guinea, Lao PDR, and Mongolia (2026, BMC Infectious Diseases); Antibody responses against influenza A decline with successive years of annual influenza vaccination (2025, npj Vaccines); and The AuTOMATIC trial: a multicentre digitally-automated, Bayesian, adaptive, parallel, factorial randomised controlled trial of SMS reminders for childhood vaccination (2026, The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific). Awards and honors include Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2024), Western Australian Young Tall Poppy Science Award (2021), and Finalist in the 2020 Eureka Prizes for Infectious Diseases Research. He held roles on the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI, 2012-2021; deputy chair 2015; co-chair 2018), leading development of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination program, the COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatments Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group (SITAG, 2020), and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and member of the Communicable Disease Network of Australia (2024).