Prof. Abdoulaye Diabaté

Prof. Abdoulaye Diabaté is Head of Medical Entomology and Parasitology at the Research Institute in Health Sciences (Institut de Recherche en Science de la Santé (IRSS) /Centre Muraz) in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso and the Principal Investigator of Target Malaria Burkina Faso. Prof. Diabaté joined Target Malaria in 2012 when he established Target Malaria Burkina Faso. He has since become a leader in malaria research and in genetic approaches to malaria reduction in Africa. Prof. Diabaté was trained as a doctor of Animal Biology and Ecology at the University of Ouagadougou and obtained his PhD in parasitology from the University of Montpellier II (France) in 2003. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in 2005/2009 at the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector research of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA. He returned to Burkina Faso in 2009, where he now works at the Research Institute in Health Sciences heading the medical entomology laboratory.

Professor Diabaté has been an invited speaker in several prestigious universities including Harvard University to catalyse a lasting collaboration between IRSS and other research centres or universities across the world. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Pfizer award 2013, was awarded the Grand Challenges Star in Global Health grant and the MRC/DFID African Leader Scheme grant, the PAMCA award for his contribution to the medical entomology field and the “Chevalier des Palmes académiques” of the Government of Burkina Faso in recognition of his significant contribution to scientific research in Burkina Faso. He was interviewed by several prestigious international and national media, including the BBC, Netflix, The New York Times, the National TV channel of Burkina Faso. He is a member of the African Academy of Sciences.

Professor Diabaté and his team of eight researchers based in the United States and Burkina Faso received the 2019 Newcomb Cleveland Prize at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For more information, please read this blog by Raymond J. Monnat, Jr. M.D.  

More recently, he  has been  named as one of the 10 global winners  of the prestigious  Falling Walls  Science & Innovation Prize  2023. An interview was published on the Falling Walls website titled ‘ERADICATING MALARIA: GENETIC SOLUTIONS AND AFRICAN LEADERSHIP‘.  You can view the press release here.

In April 2024, Prof. Diabaté was a global speaker at the TED Annual Conference in Vancouver. His TED Talk was on “How to end malaria once and for all” and focused on the potential of gene drive technology to genetically modify mosquitoes and control malaria in Africa.

In September 2024, Target Malaria’s team in Burkina Faso at the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (Burkina Faso) featured in the Netflix show “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates” where Prof. Abdoulaye Diabaté is interviewed by Bill Gates in the fifth episode to answer this key question: how can we end malaria once and for all in our lifetime? View the trailer here.

In Netflix’s documentary “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates”, Prof. Diabaté is interviewed by Bill Gates in an episode highlighting innovative tools including the genetic modification of mosquitoes to fight malaria in Africa.

View Professor Diabaté’s Wikipedia page here.

Professor Diabaté also runs several other research projects.