Contact information
Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford, Churchill Hospital, Oxford OX3 7LE
Research groups
Ilaria Onofrio
Research Assistant
Gonococcal Vaccine Project
Dr. Ilaria Onofrio is a DPhil-trained immunologist with a strong passion for infectious disease immunology and translational vaccine research. She earned her doctorate in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford, where her work focused on the development and immunological evaluation of novel vaccines against Neisseria gonorrhoeae. She holds a BSc in Biotechnology from the University of Perugia, complemented by an Erasmus exchange at University College Cork (Ireland), where she focused on infectious disease and pharmacology.
Ilaria joined the Gonococcal Vaccine Group at the Jenner Institute in February 2021, University of Oxford, where she's been working on IND-enabling immunological research for novel outer membrane vesicle vaccines. Her work includes developing and optimizing immunoassays, characterizing vaccine candidates in vivo and in vitro.Her research interests lie in host–pathogen interactions, mucosal immunology, and vaccine-induced immunity, driven by a desire to understand how immune responses shape the outcome of infection and how this knowledge can be used to develop preventive measures.