Ting Shi
Senior Lecturer
- Usher Institute
- College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Contact details
Address
- Street
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Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh
5-7 Little France Road | Edinburgh | EH16 4UX - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH16 4UX
Background
Dr Ting Shi is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor) at The University of Edinburgh. She obtains the PhD and MPH degrees in Public Health Sciences from the University of Edinburgh, and Bachelor of Medicine from Peking University. She has expertise in infectious disease epidemiology and pandemic preparedness.
Qualifications
PhD, MPH
Responsibilities & affiliations
1. Committee member of MRC Doctoral Training Program in Precision Medicine Academic Steering Group, Mar 2021 - current.
2. Academic Editor for PLOS Global Public Health, Mar 2023 - current.
3. Committee member of Usher Institute Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), May 2023 - Dec 2025.
4. Committee member of Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) Impact Committee, Jan 2025 - Dec 2025.
5. Committee member of CMVM International Committee, May 2025 - Aug 2025.
5. Co-ordinator for CMVM Future Medicine PhD Fellowship, Nov 2024 - current.
6. Advisor for Infectious Respiratory Diseases Surveillance and Evaluation Executive (IRD-SEE) within Public Health Scotland, Sep 2025 - current.
7. Scientific meeting committee member, International Society for Respiratory Viruses, Nov 2025 - current.
8. Guest Editor for Vaccines special issue “Recent Progress of Vaccines for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)”, Dec 2025 - current.
Postgraduate teaching
1. Course co-led for Infectious Disease Epidemiology for MSc Epidemiology during 2022/2023 and 2024/2025.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I have two PhD positions open to UK students, fully funded.
I am happy to support the applications for the following scholarships:
- China Scholarships Council/University of Edinburgh Scholarships: https://www.ed.ac.uk/student-funding/postgraduate/international/region/asia/china-council. Deadline is expected in February each year.
- Edinburgh Doctoral College Scholarship: https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/teaching-learning/study-with-us/postgraduate-research/edinburgh-doctoral-college-scholarship. Deadline is expected in January each year.
- Darwin Trust awards four year PhD studentship: https://darwintrust.bio.ed.ac.uk/biostudentships. Each year deadline is in early January.
- Medical Research Scotland four year PhD studentship: https://medicalresearchscotland.org.uk/phd-studentships/. Each year deadline is around end of September.
Current PhD students supervised
1. Daira Trusinska, PhD candidate (with Aziz Sheikh and Jurgen Schwarze), September 2023 - current.
2. Ruonan Pei, PhD candidate, October 2024 - current.
3. Harrison Bott, PhD candidate (with Antonia Ho from University of Glasgow), September 2024 - current.
4. Milly Young, PhD candidate, September 2025 - current.
5. Rhona Kiernan, PhD candidate, September 2025 - current.
6. Immie Call, PhD candidate, September 2026 - current.
7. Constantinos Mavrommatis (with Rob Young), PhD candidate, September 2026 - current.
Past PhD students supervised
1. Ahad Khan, PhD candidate (with Harry Campbell and Steve Cunningham), October 2019 - November 2023.
2. John Wood, MSc of Epidemiology, September 2024 - August 2025.
3. Rosa Hamilton-Smith, BSc of Infectious Disease, November 2024 - August 2025.
4. Becky Gordon, PhD intern, January 2025 - March 2025.
Research summary
Dr Shi is an Epidemiologist with expertise in infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness. She has a particular interest in respiratory viral infections, including Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and COVID-19. Dr Shi has a strong track record of building the international research teams needed to deliver the projects and her research has been widely recognised by her peers and seniors. She has substantial experience in working with industry, and national and international policy making/influencing bodies (particularly the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), Gates Foundation, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), and the World Health Organization (WHO)).
Dr Shi has produced 82 publications (citations >13k, h-index 38), with 27 as first or senior author (The Lancet, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Chest, Journal of Infectious Diseases etc.). More work has been published in Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, The Lancet Global Health, and other peer-reviewed journals. A list of her publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I27lKrwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. She also produced four reports for policymakers (e.g., UNICEF, WHO).
She is a committee member of Medical Research Council (MRC) Doctoral Training Program in Precision Medicine Academic Steering Group and an Academic Editor for the PLOS Global Public Health Journal.
Some examples of the research outputs:
Current research interests
epidemiology, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, SARS-CoV-2, global health, individual participant data meta analysis, national linked dataset, big data analysis, pandemic preparednessKnowledge exchange
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Royal Society of Edinburgh's new Mary Sommerville Medal as part of the EAVE team in March 2023
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Royal Statistical Society's Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Healthcare Data Analytics as part of EAVE team in July 2023
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University of Edinburgh Research Impact Prize – Outstanding Achievement as part of EAVE team in May 2024
- Clarivate 2025 highly cited scientist globally
Project activity
The projects Dr Shi is currently leading are 1) evaluating effectiveness and impact of the maternal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine on short and long-term outcomes, 2) characterise the risk profiles of common respiratory infections including RSV, influenza and COVID-19 and predict how they affect the NHS winter pressure, 3) investigate the role of environmental factors on winter respiratory disease risk in adults in Scotland, 4) health economic analysis of targeted vaccination strategies against influenza in Scotland, 5) investigate the association between early life exposure to viral respiratory infection and childhood recurrent wheeze and asthma development, 6) explore the epidemiology of bacterial coinfection and antimicrobial use in influenza or SARS-CoV-2 associated admissions.
Current project grants
1. National Institute for Health and Care Research: co-I (WP1 lead), £3 million, “Improving Equity in Respiratory Disease Outcomes in Africa using Data-Driven Tools: EQUI-RESP-AFRICA”, Sep 2024 – Aug 2028 (4 years).
Past project grants
1. UK Health Security Agency (UK HSA): co-I, £79k, “Defined analysis plan to inform public health response of a potential future pathogen”, Nov 2023 – Apr 2024 (6 months).
2. The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Joint Projects with National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC): PI, £12,000, “Diagnosis Of Coronavirus And Its Co-infection”, Apr 2023 - Mar 2024 (1 year).
3. National Institute for Health and Care Research: co-I, £61,411, “Describing, characterising and predicting winter respiratory accident and emergency attendances, hospital and intensive care unit admissions and deaths”, Jan 2023 – Mar 2023 (6 months).
4. National Core Study – Immunity: co-PI, £113,931, “Use of national linked healthcare data to identify and characterise post-autumn booster dose severe COVID-19 outcomes across the UK”, Sep 2022 – Mar 2023 (6 months).
5. National Core Study – Immunity: co-PI, £261,860, “Use of national linked healthcare, serology and viral genomic data to identify and characterise post-third and -booster dose vaccine breakthroughs at a population level”, Apr 2022 - Sep 2022 (6 months).
6. Wellcome Institutional Translation Partnership Award (iTPA) Springboard Fund: PI, £5,000, Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 (12 months).
7. Wellcome iTPA Translational Innovation Competition: PI, £1,000, Jan – Sep 2021 (9 months).
8. Eurolife Short-term Research Exchange Grant: PI, €1,500, Jun – Jul 2017 (2 months).