Oxford statistician Christl Donnelly has been awarded the Royal Statistical Society’s (RSS) Guy Medal in Silver in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the development and application of statistical and biomathematical methods to the analysis of infectious diseases.

The Guy Medal in Silver is among the Society’s most highly regarded honours, awarded annually to recognise influential research and its practical application. Professor Donnelly’s work focuses on using statistical methods to extract robust insights from dynamical models of disease transmission, demography, and interventions.

"It means a great deal to me to receive such an honour from my statistical colleagues"

"It means a great deal to me to receive such an honour from my statistical colleagues," said Professor Donnelly. "Medical statistics and epidemiology are team sports rather than solo endeavours and I have been so fortunate to work with amazing people: statisticians as well as epidemiologists, ecologists, medics and veterinarians. William Guy, for whom the medal is named, was an outstanding medical statistician and advocate for public health, and I am really pleased to have followed in his footsteps of providing statistical evidence to policymakers."

Professor Donnelly has played a leading role in the statistical design, conduct, and interpretation of studies that transformed understanding of COVID-19 epidemiology and the measures required to protect public health. Her research has been instrumental in shaping policy responses during the pandemic, building on an extensive publication record that includes five papers in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, one of which was presented at a Royal Statistical Society special topic meeting on COVID-19 transmission.

Beyond her work on COVID-19, Professor Donnelly has led modelling studies on a range of infectious diseases, including Zika virus, Ebola, and foot-and-mouth disease. She is Professor of Statistical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and is affiliated with the Oxford Martin School and the Pandemic Sciences Institute, where her work contributes to interdisciplinary research on global health and pandemic preparedness.