Dyann Wirth receives lifetime achievement award for malaria research

Abdisalan Noor (left) and Dyann Wirth (center) with MIM Society leaders Wilfred Mbacham, president at Fobang Institutes for Innovations in Science & Technology, Yaoundé, Cameroon (second from left), Rose Leke, chair, independent review committee at GAVI and co-chair of the Defeating Malaria Initiative at Harvard University (second from right), and Evelyn Ansah, director of the Centre for Malaria Research, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana (right)
Abdisalan Noor (left) and Dyann Wirth (center) with MIM Society leaders Wilfred Mbacham, president at Fobang Institutes for Innovations in Science & Technology, Yaoundé, Cameroon (second from left), Rose Leke, chair, independent review committee at GAVI and co-chair of the Defeating Malaria Initiative at Harvard University (second from right), and Evelyn Ansah, director of the Centre for Malaria Research, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana (right)

May 14, 2024 – Dyann Wirth of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has received a top award from the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Society for playing a pivotal role in the global fight against malaria.

Wirth, Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Infectious Diseases, received an Ogobara Doumbo MIM Award for Lifetime Achievements in Malaria Research and Capacity Building. The award was presented at the 8th Pan-African Malaria Conference, held in Kigali, Rwanda in late April.

Wirth is an expert in the molecular biology of infectious diseases. Her research has focused on the molecular mechanisms at work in protozoan parasites such as the malaria parasite, with the goal of discovering interventions. She is faculty director of the Harvard University initiative Defeating Malaria: From the Genes to the Globe.

Also at the conference in Rwanda, Abdisalan Noor, visiting professor of immunology and infectious diseases, was chosen to serve as interim president of the MIM Society. Noor previously led the strategic information unit of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Programme and served as director of the Nairobi Programme of the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme.

Read an MIM Society press release: Leadership at the helm of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Society

Photo: Carmen Mejia