Professor Sir Brian Greenwood

Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine LSHTM

Areas of interest: Malaria, Meningitis, Pneumonia

Brian Greenwood qualified in medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK in 1962. Following house-officer appointments in London, he spent 3 years in Western Nigeria as a medical registrar and research fellow at University College Hospital, Ibadan. After receiving training in clinical immunology in the UK, he returned to Nigeria in 1970, this time to help in establishing a new medical school at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he developed his research interests in malaria and meningococcal disease whilst continuing to teach and practice clinical medicine.

In 1980, he moved to the UK Medical Research Council Laboratories in The Gambia which he directed for the next 15 years. In The Gambia, he helped to establish a multi-disciplinary research programme which focused on some of the most important infectious diseases prevalent in The Gambia and neighbouring countries such as malaria, pneumonia, measles, meningitis, hepatitis and HIV2.  Work undertaken during this period included demonstration of the efficacy of insecticide treated bednets in preventing death from malaria in African children and demonstration of the impact of Haemophilus influenzae type b and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines when deployed in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 1996, he was appointed to the staff of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where he is now Manson Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine. From 2001-2009, he directed the Gates Malaria Partnership which supported a programme of research and capacity development in many countries in Africa directed at improving treatment and prevention of malaria. In 2008, he became director of a new capacity development initiative supported by the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC), which operates a post-graduate malaria training programme in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and he also co-ordinates  the African Meningococcal Carriage Consortium (MenAfriCar), supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, which is studying meningococcal carriage in Africa before and after introduction of a new meningococcal conjugate vaccine.

Research Interests:

His main research interest ranges from malaria, meningitis and respiratory disease as well as capacity building.