Ashley Birkett First Malaria World Congress 2018

Ashley Birkett

Ashley Birkett is the Director of PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and the Global Head of the malaria disease area within PATH’s Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access (CVIA). He joined PATH in 2008 as MVI’s director of research and development (R&D). PATH’s CVIA brings together expertise across every stage of vaccine research, development, and introduction to make lifesaving vaccines globally available to women, children, and communities, particularly in low resource settings. CVIA’s portfolio currently includes more than two dozen vaccine projects to protect against 17 diseases. Ashley oversees the development and implementation of the malaria program’s strategy, including programmatic, administrative, and financial management aspects, to develop new models and explore new pathways that will accelerate the development of malaria vaccines. Ashley plays an integral leadership role in guiding the work of more than 40 professionals involved in projects in MVI’s portfolio, including supporting the World Health Organization leading up to the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme. Ashley has more than 20 years of vaccine development experience, initially with biotechnology companies, where he successfully advanced novel influenza and malaria vaccine candidates from research through first-in-human clinical studies. Ashley earned a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from Virginia Commonwealth University; he has a BSc (Honors) in applied biological sciences from the University of the West of England in the United Kingdom.