In 2009, Oliver Bannard completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Douglas Fearon at the University of Cambridge, UK, investigating the developmental pathway of memory CD8+ T cells. Subsequently, he joined Professor Jason Cyster's laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), supported by a Wellcome Trust-funded postdoctoral fellowship, where his focus shifted to B cell research. In 2015, Prof. Bannard returned to the UK to establish an independent research group at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM) at the University of Oxford. His laboratory has received substantial funding from the Wellcome Trust, initially through a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship (2015–2021) and more recently a Senior Research Fellowship (2021–present). The group's research aims to uncover the mechanisms governing humoral immune responses, with a particular focus on germinal centres.

Seminar topic: Selection events that shape serum antibody responses to infection