Kenneth Baillie

Kenneth Baillie is an Academic Consultant in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Kenneth Baillie graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc(Hons) in Physiology in 1999 and MBChB in 2002. He completed basic training in medicine in Glasgow, and in anesthesia in Edinburgh. During this time he led a series of high altitude research projects in Bolivia, and founded a high-altitude research charity, Apex. He was appointed as a clinical lecturer on the ECAT (Edinburgh Clinical Academic Track) at the University of Edinburgh in 2008, and completed a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD in statistical genetics in 2012. He was awarded a Wellcome-Beit Prize Intermediate Clinical Fellowship in 2013. After completing clinical training in 2014 he worked as a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, before returning to the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh to establish a research program in translational applications of genomics in critical care medicine. He works as a consultant in the intensive care unit at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh.

Kenneth's research interest is the genetics of host susceptibility to severe infection. He led the GenISIS (Genetics of Influenza Susceptibility in Scotland) study and the host genetics component of the MOSAIC (Mechanisms of Severe Influenza Consortium) study. In his role as working group chair for genomics, pathogenesis and pharmacology for the International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC), he led the development of an integrated biological sampling protocol for use in outbreaks, which is supported by the World Health Organization and has been adopted in many countries throughout the world. Kenneth's research is focused on using genomics and transcriptomics to better understand and treat critical illness. The fundamental problem is the lack of treatments to stop people dying from severe infections - a syndrome known as sepsis. We believe that a functional genomics approach can lead us to biological processes that might be amenable to treatment. Much of his work focuses on specific infections, such as influenza.

Kenneth Baillie has participated in renowned studies, such as 'Features of 20 133 UK patients in hospital with covid-19 using the ISARIC WHO Clinical Characterization Protocol: prospective observational cohort study', which aims to characterize the clinical features of patients admitted to hospital with coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) in the United Kingdom during the growth phase of the first wave of this outbreak who were enrolled in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) World Health Organization (WHO) Clinical Characterization Protocol UK ( CCP-UK) study, and to explore risk factors associated with mortality in hospital.

Kenneth is University of Edinburgh's leader for the project 'ISARIC 4C- Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium'. Funder: Medical Research Council. Total award: £4.9m. Led by: Kenneth Baillie (University of Edinburgh), M.G. Semple (University of Liverpool), Peter Openshaw (Imperial College London). Partner organisations: University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Imperial College London, University of Liverpool, University of Oxford, Public Health England