Peter Openshaw is a respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist, studying how the immune system both protects against viral infection but also causes disease.

He has worked on RSV and influenza since the mid-1980s, leading a large Wellcome Trust funded national collaboration: Mechanisms of Severe Acute Influenza Consortium MOSAIC (2009-12), recruiting cases of severe influenza during the influenza pandemic of 2009-2010. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, he co-led the ISARIC4C consortium that recruited hospitalized cases in the UK (https://isaric4c.net/).

He has run studies of human experimental infection of volunteers since 2008 and was Director of the MRC-funded HIC-Vac consortium (https://www.hic-vac.org/) established to promote the use of human experimental infection to accelerate vaccine development. for pathogens of high global impact.

He was President of the British Society for Immunology (2013-18) and is a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences–British Society for Immunology expert taskforce on the immunology of COVID-19.

He has been a member of SAGE (2009-12), and was Chair/vice-Chair of NERVTAG (a Department of Health committee horizon-scanning for emerging respiratory threats) until September 2022. He is a member of the UK Vaccine Network and several committees and Boards that oversee research on the immunology of respiratory infection.

He was Theme Lead for Respiratory Disease and then Infection at the Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, and demitted as Head of the Respiratory Infections Section of the National Heart and Lung Institute in July 2024. He was the Chanock Memorial Awardee for lifetime contribution to RSV research in 2012, received the EFIS Metchnikoff-Ehrlich medal for immunology in 2014 and became an Honorary Lifetime member of the British Society for Immunology in 2019. He is an Emeritus NIHR Senior Investigator, awarded CBE in 2022 for services to Medicine and Immunology. He received the Imperial College Medal and the Per Brandtzaeg Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award for Mucosal Immunology in 2024.