Carl Mayers Assistant Director, Head of the Improvement Analytics Unit
Carl joined the Health Foundation in July 2023 as head of the Improvement Analytics Unit.
Prior to joining the Health Foundation, Carl was a Deputy Director at the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which became the UK Health Security Agency in 2022. Carl led the International Assessment Division, a large group of qualitative and quantitative analysts, epidemiologists, statisticians and clinical staff, tasked with understanding the changing risks to the UK from COVID-19 and other threats.
Prior to this, Carl led the Epidemiology Team on the COVID-19 SAGE secretariat at the Government Office for Science. His team had a broad range of responsibilities, including publishing scientific evidence, briefing decision makers, communicating scientific advice to policymakers, evaluating interventions and commissioning new analysis.
Prior to the pandemic, Carl worked as a Civil Servant for twenty years in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). He became a Fellow in 2012, leading work on bioinformatics, genomic analysis, forensic science and high-containment microbiology. During this time he was a visiting lecturer at Cranfield and Kent Universities, a lecturer in infectious diseases for the Open University, and served on an advisory panel to the Forensic Science Regulator. Carl was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2010.
Carl has a PhD and a Master’s degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, and was awarded the OBE in 2012 for services to the military.
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Patel, S., Cumming, F., Mayers, C., Charlett, A., Riley, S. (2023). Global surveillance of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants. Emerging Infections Diseases (in press: preprint at https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.10.23288358)
Mayers, C. N. (2021). RNA virus detection method. UK Patent, GB2589171A
Mayers, C. & Baker, K. (2020) Impact of false-positives and false-negatives in the UK’s COVID-19 RT-PCR testing programme. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gos-impact-of-false-positives-and-negatives-3-june-2020)
Mayers, C. N. (2019). Improved forensic methods and products for extracting and amplifying trace DNA for DNA sequencing. European Patent, EP3850109A1, International Patent WO2020053538A1
Mayers, C. N., Murray-Jones, K., Fell, J. O., Swan, M. G. & White, P. J. (2019). Forensic analysis of an object for chemical and biological materials. UK Patent, GB2572862A, International Patent WO2019175527A8
Wood, Z., Mitchell, T., Gammon, K., Stanton, D. & Mayers, C. N. (2019). Non-destructive means of sampling paper documents for generation of STR profiles. Forensic Science International, 7(1), 755-757
Gammon, K., Murray-Jones, K., Shenton, D., Wood. & Mayers, C. N. (2019). Touch DNA on objects can be analysed at low cost using simplified direct amplification methods. bioRxiv, 8 February 2019, https://doi.org/10.1101/540823
Gammon, K. & Mayers, C. N. (2019). Optimisation of rapid STR analysis using a standard DNA forensic pipeline. bioRxiv, 13 March 2019, https://doi.org/10.1101/575357
Mayers, C. N. (2018). Method for measuring optical brighteners in environmental water. UK Patent, GB2576949A
Mayers, C. N. (2015). Genomics in low-tech environments. Proceedings on Science and Technology Facilities Council conference ‘‘Serious Infectious Disease: Challenges for Security and Defence’, ed. Cole, J., p81-86
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