Notre Dame and its Center for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (CGHID) will continue to be major players in the fight against deadly infectious illnesses, thanks to a recent $20 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The grant will fund an expansive, international research project, led by Frank Collins, director of the CGHID and the George and Winifred Clark Chair in Biological Sciences at Notre Dame.
The Gates grant, one of the largest external research grants ever awarded to a Notre Dame faculty member, will fund a five-year, multi-site project aimed at evaluating malaria control efforts in Africa and Asia. Malaria kills more than one million people every year, mostly infants, young children and pregnant women.
Collins and his team, including several ND graduate and undergraduate students, are working to gather information about the patterns of malaria transmission and control in a variety of field sites, including Indonesia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. They are working with partners from the Swiss Tropical Institute, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Durham University.
CGHID scientists have already gained international renown for mapping the genetic blueprint of the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and yellow and dengue fevers — a critical move that is helping scientists to develop more potent insecticides and engineer new varieties of mosquitoes incapable of transmitting human disease.
