Personal Statement
Calum is the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) for Scotland, a secondment that began in August 2025.

Calum was raised in Glasgow and Edinburgh. He qualified in medicine from the University of Oxford after completing a PhD in Clinical Virology at University College London and a Bachelor's Tripos in Cell Pathology, Immunology, and Virology at Middlesex Hospital Medical School. His clinical academic training in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine began in 2002 when he was awarded a Department of Health National Clinical Scientist Fellowship at the University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. He was appointed Consultant in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in 2006. He was promoted to Professor of Outbreak Medicine and Child Health at the University of Liverpool in 2018. He will retain these positions, albeit with reduced activity, during his appointment to the Scottish Government.

Calum has been studying severe viral outbreaks since 1989 and co-founded the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) in 2012. He has led research on HIV/AIDS, Bronchiolitis, Influenza, Ebola, Mpox, COVID-19, and Hepatitis, with a focus on disease characterisation and clinical countermeasures. The Wellcome Trust, UK NIHR, and UKRI MRC have supported his work. For his leadership of medical research activities in Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016, he and his team were awarded the Queen’s Ebola Medal for Service in West Africa. In 2019, he received a Commonwealth Award for his ongoing work with Ebola Survivors.

Calum has held key advisory roles during public health emergencies, including serving as a UK Government advisor during the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, on the WHO Scientific Advisory Committee for the Ebola Emergency - STAC-EE (2014–2017), the New Emerging Respiratory Viral Threats Advisory Group - NERVTAG (2014–2023), and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies - SAGE for COVID-19 (2020–2022). He was appointed OBE in 2020 for his contributions to the COVID-19 response and was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health by distinction in 2022.

Calum’s leadership style is founded upon integrity, grit, recognition of others’ contributions, respect for diversity, support for growth, and clear communication.

Clinical Patient Coordinator: RespiratoryPCO@AlderHey.nhs.uk +44 (0) 151 252 5054

Research Overview
Professor Calum Semple has studied severe virus disease outbreaks since 1989 in the fields of diagnostics, clinical characterization and clinical trials. He was a founder member of ISARIC. He has led studies of COVID-19, MERS, Monkeypox, Ebola (EVD and Survivors), Lassa Fever, Influenza, and Bronchiolitis, at times field-deployed in austere circumstances.

He is Chief Investigator for BESS, FLU-CATs, WHO ISARIC Clinical Characterisation Protocol UK (CCP-UK), and CO-CIN. ISARIC CCP-UK and CO-CIN are pandemic response studies that have been activated for the covid-19 outbreak.

Calum is the chief investigator for ISARIC’s Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium in the UK (ISARIC4C.net). Thanks to the consortium’s work, the UK now leads the world in having the largest and most detailed observational study on COVID-19 (n>305,000). The harmonised data sets and biological samples have supported vaccine development (ChAdOx), therapeutic trials (RECOVERY) and led to discoveries of the pathophysiology of COVID-19 and long-COVID.

BESS - the Bronchiolitis Endotracheal Surfactant Study in a multinational randomised controlled trial of Endotracheal Surfactant administered to infants with life-threatening Bronchiolitis funded by the NIHR EME programme.

He was a co-investigator on ARCHIE (2014-22) and Emergency Evaluation of Convalescent Plasma for Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) in Guinea "Ebola-Tx" (2014-17). Calum was a co-investigator on the FLU-CIN and MOSAIC studies that characterized in near real-time the clinical and immunological response to Influenza A/H1N1pdm2009 infection during the pandemic.