Prof Paton is an infectious disease physician and clinical trialist. He trained in medicine and infectious diseases in Cambridge, Sydney and London, and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He holds a joint appointment as Professor of Infectious Diseases at the National University of Singapore and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

His research interests are optimisation of HIV and tuberculosis treatment in resource-limited settings, and he collaborates widely with research institutions in both Asia and Africa. In HIV, he has led pivotal clinical trials such as EARNEST and NADIA, testing options for second line therapy in Africa; and is the scientific lead of the CARES trial, testing 2-monthly injectable long-acting therapy for HIV. These trials have changed international HIV treatment guidelines and the approach to HIV drug resistance testing.

In TB, he leads a program of treatment trials coordinated from Singapore, including the TRUNCATE-TB trial, conducted in a network of 18 sites in Asia and Africa that evaluated a strategy for using 8 weeks of initial treatment instead of the standard 24-week regimen for TB. He is also a core academic lead for the EU-funded UNITE4TB trials consortium and the Chief Investigator for the flagship trial of that network – the PARADIGM4TB trial – which is testing multiple new drug combinations for tuberculosis in a global network of clinical research sites.