Halvor Sommerfelt

Halvor Sommerfelt is a professor in epidemiology and global health at the Centre for International Health, and the Director of the Centre for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health (www.uib.no/en/cismac) and senior consultant at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. He has through international collaborative ventures with research groups in India, Nepal, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Zambia and South Africa, Europe, and the U.S. and with external funding from the Research Council of Norway, EU, NORAD, WHO, The Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU) coordinated front-line research accompanied by capacity strengthening aimed at treating and preventing important childhood infections and promoting child growth, development and survival. His research spans basic molecular microbiological studies aimed at vaccine development, experimental immunological studies, molecular epidemiological studies, vaccine trials, and intervention trials of downstream biomedical and behavioral interventions to prevent pneumonia, diarrhea and severe bacterial infection (sepsis) to identify ways of preventing and treating these and other important childhood infections and reducing their nutritional insult. Sommerfelt has co-authored almost 130 scientific papers reporting on original scientific work published in international peer-reviewed journals, (co-)authored 29 reviews, protocol papers, opinion papers, and letters to editors, held several lectures at research institutions in Europe, India, sub-Saharan Africa and the US, and has acted as a referee for several scientific journals. He has organized international scientific meetings on vaccine research and on maternal and child health.

He was from 2001 to 2003 the Norwegian representative in the Working group and Steering committee of the planning project for the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (www.edctp.org), was in 2007 appointed to the GAVI Alliance’s Independent Assessment Committee for Advance Market Commitment for vaccines (http://www.vaccineamc.org), and a member of the epidemiology steering committee of The Global Enterics Multi-Center Study (http://medschool.umaryland.edu/GEMS). He has been an expert to several WHO advisory groups, including on non-specific effects of vaccines (https://www.who.int/immunization/research/implementation/nse_protocol_comments/en) and volunteer challenge models for developing COVID-19 vaccines (www.tinyurl.com/WHOHumanChallengeCOVID19). Sommerfelt is a member of the Data Safety Monitoring Board for WHO’s Solidarity trial(s) for COVID-19 vaccines (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/accelerating-a-safe-and-effective-covid-19-vaccine).

He has supervised 13 PhD candidates.