Our Outstanding Ambassador for Immunology Award recognises and celebrates the contribution and impact of an individual who has been an outstanding ambassador for immunology in the UK, using their network and influence to champion the immunology sector. This year, it was awarded to Professor Daniel Davis, Imperial College London, in recognition of his achievements in both academic and public engagement activities.
With the recent publication of his fourth book, Self Defence, Dan’s work shines a light on how immunology can influence our health, demystify the science behind many diet and lifestyle claims, and helps his audiences understand just how complex our biological systems really are.
We spoke to Dan about his journey in science communication, what he’s learned about writing for the public, and what the award means to him.
I wanted to start by saying congratulations on your book. What is it that inspires you to write?
The core job of being a scientist, and trying to understand how the human immune system works, requires you to repeat lots of experiments, think about the controls, think about alternative explanations and about nuances in the way in which the technique works. That’s a lot of focus on the nitty gritty details of what it is exactly you're doing, which is always going to be a small fragment of the whole picture.
So, for me, one of the important reasons for me to write is to give myself the opportunity to step back and try to take stock of the whole thing. The whole human endeavour that we're on to try to understand the immune system, to think about what that means for our lives, for making new kinds of medicines, and how we understand the human body itself – all these kinds of bigger picture issues.
But there are also quite a few other reasons, too. My very first book was actually about the MHC system. For me, there's a really profound message within the MHC system. It’s the most diverse gene of all human genes. It's a wonderful, fundamental reason why we are all so different. We are most diverse in our immune system. So, my first book was really written because I thought that studying the details of the immune system provides a fundamental window into human diversity, if you like.
And there are many other things that have come up while I've been writing popular science books. I've really enjoyed interviewing people. Because this is a human endeavour. So, for the first few books I've interviewed well over 100 scientists.
What skills have you had to lean on to fit towards different audiences?
When writing a research article, you are trying to make the experiment itself very clear so that other people can understand very precisely what you did in that experiment, and then you are trying to fit that into the context of prior work as well as thinking about what it might mean for future research. It's quite a formulaic process; you're writing an introduction, your results, some discussion, and then all the methods in detail. When you're writing a book, all of that is out of the window, and I suppose you're looking on a much broader canvas as to where we're at with immunology and thinking much more about what is really interesting to a very general audience.
How long did the research and writing process take for Self Defence?
Each book I write is about three years.
I'm working in the university as well. So, it's not like I'm working all the time for three years on it. But I do tend to write fairly slowly and I do tend to try my best to think deeply, as I'm going along in both the terms of the writing itself and the thing I'm trying to write about, and it just does all happen quite slowly, but that's an enjoyable part of it for me. I don't mind if it takes me two years, three years, four years, it doesn't really matter.
During the research and writing process for this book, was there anything that surprised you?
I think that the most surprising thing about what I learned about immune health is that it's very easy to pick up books or see things on social media that are telling you to do this or that. And I never really knew where a lot of that came from. Once I dug into all the experiments that people have done it was surprising just how unclear the actual experiments really are. There's a lot of experiments that show the importance of something, but they don't lead to declarative health advice. And yet, somehow, a lot of these experiments get twisted into very quick declarative sound bites, guidance and advice.
You were very recently awarded the 2025 BSI Outstanding Ambassador for Immunology Award. How did it feel to receive that recognition?
It's lovely to win an award. Especially because at the outset, one of the things I was very worried about for writing popular science was what my peers would think. I was worried that other scientists would think I was wasting time or doing something that's a bit of a fringe activity and not very important.
This award is the culmination of the journey in the sense that it is true that other scientists think it's OK. The fact that there even is an award for science communication is really wonderful because I think 20 years ago it was a slightly frowned upon activity among the high echelons of academic science and, and I think more and more the importance of how we engage with the public has become of ever-increasing importance.
The fact there is an award is wonderful. I mean the fact that I got it is great. But I also think that there is a really big swell of activity in science communication and immunology. So, in any of these awards, I always think that there's a lot of people out there who are being very brave and doing really courageous things in communicating science and also deserve recognition.
What advice would you give to immunologists who were considering trying their hand at science communication?
I suppose there are two things to say. One is, depending on what it is you want to do, it's very important to find someone who's doing that and ask them how they got into it. If you want to write a book, then ask someone who's written a book about what it takes. How do they do it? Someone who's been through that process will have a lot of simple advice that will make it a lot easier. The second bit of advice, is maybe kind of slightly contrary to that, which is that everyone is very much on their own journey, and there is actually no right or wrong way to do any of these things.