Professor Screaton received his first degree from Cambridge in 1984 before moving to Oxford to complete his medical studies in 1987. He then completed training in general internal medicine and obtained a DPhil from Oxford University in 1998. In 2004, Professor Screaton was appointed to the Chair of Medicine at Imperial College. He returned to Oxford as Head of the Medical Sciences Division in October 2017.
His research, which has been supported by a series of Fellowships awarded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust, has covered a variety of topics from control of RNA processing and apoptosis to immunology. The current interests of his laboratory revolve around the immunology of infectious diseases with a special interest in dengue haemorrhagic fever and Zika, where his research is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust, with active research collaborations in South-East Asia.
Professor Screaton is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a member of the Association of Physicians and was made a Founder Senior Investigator in the National Institute for Health Research. He is also a member of the MRC Strategic Board.