Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert DBE FRS (born April 1962) is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech.

In January 2020, she read a report on ProMED-mail about four people in China suffering from a strange kind of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan.

[13][16] She moved to the University of Hull for her doctoral degree, where she investigated the genetics and biochemistry of the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides, graduating with a PhD in 1986.

[14] In particular, her research considers the development and preclinical testing of viral vaccinations, which embed a pathogenic protein inside a safe virus.

[28][29][30][2] She leads the work on this vaccine candidate alongside Andrew Pollard, Teresa Lambe, Sandy Douglas, Catherine Green and Adrian Hill.

[31] As with her earlier work, the COVID-19 vaccine makes use of an adenoviral vector, which stimulates an immune response against the coronavirus spike protein.

[35] That same month, Gilbert was reported as saying that her candidate vaccine could be available by September 2020,[36] if everything goes to plan with the clinical trial, which has received funding from sources such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

[37] Gilbert delivered an update in September 2020 that the vaccine, AZD1222, was being produced by AstraZeneca while phase III trials were ongoing.

[39] In 2021, Gilbert and Catherine Green published Vaxxers: the inside story of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the race against the virus.

[42] She was also on the list of the BBC's 100 Women announced on 23 November 2020,[43] and became a senior associated research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford.