Young Chan Kim

Young Chan Kim is a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, Principal Investigator, Director of Graduate Studies (Paediatrics), Research Fellow at Wolfson College, and NHS doctor.

He obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College London, followed by medical degrees (BMBS, BMedSci, and MRes) at the University of Nottingham. After few years in clinical training, he came to Somerville College to pursue a DPhil in Clinical Medicine. His DPhil research focused on vaccine development against arthropod-borne viruses, supported by Innovate UK funding. For his overall performance during his doctorate at the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM), he was awarded the highly prestigious NDM Graduate Student Prize 2020 (Overall Prize Winner).

In 2021, he received an NIHR Oxford BRC grant for his postdoctoral research and was elected Junior Research Fellow (JRF) at Wolfson College. That same year, he joined the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) as a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, leading projects on enteric fever (typhoid and paratyphoid) and Q fever.

In 2022, he was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship to establish his independent research programme on vaccines and therapeutics against arboviruses. Between 2022 and 2023, he also secured MRC HIC-VAC and MRC IAA grants to develop serological assays for enteric fever, as well as MLSTF and MRC IAA grants to develop a novel vaccine against Chagas disease.

After successfully securing three SBRI Innovate UK awards in 2023, he began leading a team of postdoctoral researchers, research assistants, and students working on vaccines against plague, Q fever, and alphaviruses, while also overseeing Paratyphoid and C. difficile human challenge studies with Prof Sir Andrew Pollard. In the same year, he was elected Research Fellow (RF) at Wolfson College. Since 2024, he has served as Deputy Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Paediatrics, before becoming Director of Graduate Studies in 2025, providing academic leadership and oversight of graduate student supervision. 

In 2025, he received MRC IAA and two BactiVac grants to evaluate the efficacy of viral-vectored and mRNA vaccines against Chagas disease, plague and Q-fever. He is also a Co-Investigator on the large Wellcome-funded “Correlates of Protection against Paratyphoid (COP-PT)” programme led by Prof Pollard.

His research integrates translational vaccinology, controlled human infection models, and immunological correlates of protection to accelerate vaccine development for neglected and emerging infectious diseases.