Researcher profile

Daniel Pan

I am a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leicester and an Honorary Resident Physician (Specialist Registrar) in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. I trained in Medicine at Imperial College London and completed my Academic Foundation Programme and Core Medical Training in Yorkshire and London before joining Leicester in 2019 as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow and Specialist Registrar. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I contributed to research that first identified the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority groups and isolated exhaled SARS-CoV-2, directly linking it to human-to-human transmission. I have led in the design and implementation major field studies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission - including BE-DIRECT and COVMASK. COVMASK forms an essential part of my PhD, in which I have enrolled over 600 participants since 2020 and expanded to include healthcare workers and hospitalised patients with influenza, RSV, measles and mpox. I regularly collaborate with colleagues at the Oxford Big Data Institute, Imperial College London and the Hong Kong School of Public Health. I have led international guideline development with the World Health Organisation on the ethnic disparities in COVID-19 outcomes, with my work cited in more than 100 policy documents worldwide. My research has directly informed government policy through contributions to two national core studies on COVID-19 (themes of transmission/environment and immunity) supported by the UK Government Office for Science and has played a role in shaping debates in the UK House of Commons. I co-chair the NIHR Infection Trainee Network and am a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Statistical Society. I am also an invited member of the Epidemiology Special Interest Group Executive Committee on International Society for Influenza and other Respiratory Virus Diseases (ISIRV) elected member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honour Society and an Affiliate Member of the Joint UNiversities Pandemic and Epidemiological Research (JUNIPER). Additionally, I contribute to the MUSiCC consortium, a global initiative developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines aimed at blocking transmission and the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID)'s guidelines for vaccination in the immunocompromised host (I lead the COVID-19 vaccination chapter). I have authored over 110 publications (h-index of 27) and have been recognised as a top-cited scientist in General and Internal Medicine (top 2%, Elsevier Data Repository). In 2021, Forbes magazine named me as one of Europe's top '30 under 30' innovators in healthcare for my research and clinical contributions to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, I was awarded a Turner-Warwick lectureship from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) for my work on transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 and its implications for healthcare workers. I am the first recipient to deliver the Turner-Warwick Lecture twice, in two distinct subject areas (Cardiology and Infectious Diseases).