Prof David Matthews examined the AZ/Oxford vaccine to understand exactly what instructions and proteins were being made by the vaccine. This vaccine is a common cold, originally isolated from chimpanzees, that has been genetically modified to make the genetic instructions (known as mRNA) for spike protein from COVID-19. The vaccine enters cells in your body and then instructs them to make spike protein which in turn triggers an immune response so your immune system can learn how to fight COVID-19 in a safe way. 

Using the latest state of the art analysis tools, millions and millions of copies of the instructions were examined to check they were being copied faithfully and to confirm that those instructions were being followed accurately to make spike protein. This is a significant improvement on the tools traditionally used to check that these kinds of vaccines work, and provided unprecedented levels of detail and insight into how these kinds of vaccines work to produce such an effective protection from serious outcomes of COVID-19 infection. 

Prof David Matthews had access to a free at point of use HPC service to generate to results quickly. He used BlueCrystal 4 to re-analyse raw data from his experiments using different analysis packages to ensure the results were robust and not influenced by the kinds of software used to examine the data.