Ray Spier (1938-2018)

Dr. Ray Spier has been a leader in vaccines and the founder of ISV.

Having been educated at Christ Church, Oxford and University College, London in Biochemistry (First Class Honours), Chemical Microbiology and Biochemical Engineering he then spent 7 years as a Senior Process Engineer in industry. The last 3 years in America were spent with Merck Sharpe and Dohme where he was introduced to animal cell biotechnology and the production of viruses for use in veterinary and human vaccines. On returning to the UK he worked for 10 years at the Animal Virus Research Institute, Pirbright, scaling-up bioreactors for virus vaccine production processes and maximizing the biological productivity of the BHK cell lines for Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus generation. He then moved to the University of Surrey as Professor and was Head of Microbiology (7 years) and was then (1997) appointed to the first chair in the UK in ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. His publication record includes over 200 research papers and reviews along with over 20 edited books and an encyclopedia on animal and plant cell culture technology. In 2002 his book, ‘Ethics Tools and the Engineer’, was published by CRC Press. He is currently the Vaccine Series Editor in Chief, and Editor in Chief of Vaccine Research Quarterly, Procedia in Vaccinology, Trials in Vaccinology and ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. Having founded the European Society for Animal Cell Technology in 1975 and the International Society for Vaccines in 1996 (President: 2007-11), he was elected to be President of the European Association for Higher Education in Biotechnology in 2000.