Professor Dominic Kwiatkowski FRS FMedSci FRCP

Dominic specialised in global health and infectious disease research and was Professor of Genomics and Global Health at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and Head of the Parasites and Microbes Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge. He was a Professorial Fellow of St John’s and, after his recent retirement, an Emeritus Research Fellow.

Dominic’s research applied genomics and computational analysis to problems in infectious disease, with the aim of finding ways to reduce the burden of disease in the developing world. After training as a paediatrician Dominic spent several years in West Africa, where malaria causes high levels of childhood mortality, and this was a major focus of his research over the past thirty years. He made significant contributions to the understanding of malaria pathogenesis and genetic mechanisms of resistance to the disease. He also pioneered genome-wide association studies in Africa and led large international collaborations to characterise the genomic diversity of parasite and mosquito populations around the world. His work led to great insights into the evolutionary biology of drug and insecticide resistance with practical implications for disease control. The data-sharing network founded by Dominic, MalariaGEN, has fostered productive research collaborations in more than 40 malaria endemic countries, and has become a model for equitable sharing of genetic data and research capacity building in resource-poor settings.

Details of a celebration of Dominic’s life and work will be published in due course.