He attended King's Park Primary School, Lurgan College, and Queen's University Belfast (QUB), where he earned a BS in biochemistry and genetics in 1990 and a PhD in molecular virology in 1995.
[11] During this time, he won funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health to continue his work with heat-stable measles vaccines.
[14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Duprex's team began working with live SARS-CoV-2 virus in February 2020,[21] immediately helping to validate a PCR-based COVID-19 test developed by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
[22] In April 2020, Duprex secured one of the first Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) grants funding the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine, together with partners at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Themis Bioscience in Austria.
[28] With collaborators at Carnegie Mellon University, he is working on improving vaccine delivery systems that can more safely and effectively reach remote parts of the developing world.