Deborah Dunn-Walters

Deborah Kay Dunn-Walters (born September 1963) is a British immunologist who is Professor of Immunology at the University of Surrey. Her research considers B-cell development in healthy ageing and in disease, particularly from the viewpoint of antibody repertoires. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dunn-Walters focussed on mapping responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of single cell analyses of the immunological responses to a COVID-19 vaccine. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and provided the government with scientific advice during the pandemic.

Early life and education
Dunn-Walters was born in Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire and grew up in Cottingley, Bradford. Dunn-Walters worked toward her doctorate at the University of Surrey. Her doctoral research considered the glutathione peroxidase gene. After a brief period working with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund on breast cancer she moved into the study of Immunology. She has worked at University College London, King's College London and University of Surrey.

Research and career
Dunn-Walters has over a hundred primary research publications. She studies B cell development in disease, and how the immune system changes during ageing. She has developed new characterisation techniques to understand immune responses, including single-cell and repertoire approaches. She discovered IgM memory B cells in the spleen, that the older immune system has a less diverse repertoire of B cells, that there are at least 10 different types of B cells, that different types of B cells may have different repertoires and therefore be responding to different stimuli. She works in collaboration with computer scientists and together they have produced online tools for repertoire analysis. More recently, the development of new tools for distinguishing between productive and sterile transcripts of Ig constant region genes in B cells has shown that B cells become primed for Immunoglobulin class switching in a stage before they actually switch. She is part of the CARINA (Catalyst Reducing Immune Ageing) Network, a collective which looks to understand how ageing impacts the immune system and vice versa.

Dunn-Walters has served on grants awarding and strategy committees for funding bodies such as the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) MRC and BBSRC, Research Council of Norway, Fondazione Cariplo Italy. She is a member of the British Society for Research on Ageing where she has previously served on the board and as Programme Secretary. She is also a member and elected Trustee for the British Society for Immunology where she chairs their Immunology Taskforce. She also serves as Chair-elect Trustee for the Dunhill Medical Trust.

Dunn-Walters is currently the Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Physiology at the University of Surrey

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dunn-Walters served as a scientific advisor to the Government of the United Kingdom. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and Chair of the British Society for Immunology COVID-19 Taskforce. Dunn-Walters recommended all who were able to have the COVID-19 vaccine.