Rate My Professor Graham Cooke

Professor Graham Cooke is the NIHR Professor of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London, serving within the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Wright-Fleming Institute. He holds leadership roles as Vice-Dean for Research and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Additionally, he is a non-executive director and former deputy chair of the board of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), where he acted as interim co-chair from 2023 to 2025. Cooke completed his undergraduate studies at Cambridge University and trained in general medicine and infectious diseases in Oxford, London, and South Africa. He holds FRCP qualifications, a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and MD. Prior to joining Imperial College in 2006 as a Clinical Research Fellow, he was based at the Africa Health Research Institute in KwaZulu-Natal. Registered as a consultant since 1996, his clinical interests include HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, fever, and infectious diseases.

Cooke's research integrates multi-disciplinary approaches to address infectious diseases, emphasizing viral hepatitis elimination, precision medicines, and diagnostics. He leads translational infection research in the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and served as Principal Investigator for the REACT-2 study, the largest COVID-19 self-testing initiative with over three million participants, alongside leading the COVIDnudge diagnostic development. He chaired the WHO Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, influencing global recommendations on therapies and antibiotics, and led the 2019 Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology Commission on accelerating viral hepatitis elimination. As founding Principal Investigator for viral hepatitis in the National Health Informatics Collaborative, he complements primary care data with secondary care insights. Cooke also convened the Clinical Expert Group for the Infected Blood Inquiry and chairs the British HIV Association’s expert group on hepatitis. An NIHR Senior Investigator and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences since 2023, his work has advanced evidence for international viral hepatitis elimination efforts and provided critical input to the COVID-19 response. Key publications include the preliminary report on dexamethasone in hospitalized COVID-19 patients (New England Journal of Medicine, 2020), tocilizumab in COVID-19 (2021), global prevalence of hepatitis C virus genotypes (2015), and the global burden of viral hepatitis (2016).