Dr. Dominic Kwiatkowski
Deputy Chair, CD Working Group
Dominic Kwiatkowski holds a joint appointment as an MRC Clinical Research Professor at Oxford University, and as head of the Malaria Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK. He is director of the MRC Centre for Genomics and Global Health, which is a joint research program of Oxford University and the Sanger Institute.
Dominic trained in clinical paediatrics. He started research on cytokines in Charles Dinarello’s laboratory in Boston in 1985, and the following year he went to The Gambia to study the molecular mechanism of malaria fever with Brian Greenwood. In 1989 he moved to Oxford University Department of Pediatrics, while maintaining a clinical research program in The Gambia.
The overarching goal of his current research is to help solve practical problems in global health by using new approaches in genomics, epidemiology and statistical genetics. His team is developing methods for large-scale analysis of genome variation at the population level and using these to investigate, for example, how children living in malaria-endemic regions develop protective immunity against malaria, and how malaria parasites develop resistance against anti-malarial drugs. They work mainly on malaria, but many of the tools and methodologies that they are developing also have applications for other diseases.
One of Dr. Kwiatkowski’s main interests is building data-sharing networks to tackle fundamental scientific problems that can be solved only by engaging many research groups around the world. As the coordinating centre for the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network, his group provides support and training in genetics, statistics, informatics and ethics for malaria researchers in over 20 countries.