Gordon Awandare


Gordon Akanzuwine Awandare is a Ghanaian parasitologist, Professor at the University of Ghana, and Director of the .

Early life and education

Gordon Awandare was born in Kandiga, a small village in northeastern Ghana. During childhood, he contracted malaria several times a year, at a time when treatment for the disease was scarce.
Awandare was awarded a BSc in Biochemistry in 1998 and an MPhil in Biochemistry in 2002 from the University of Ghana. In 2003, he was alerted to PhD positions at the University of Pittsburgh earmarked for African fellows, and moved to the USA just eight months later. In 2007, he graduated with a PhD in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology from the School of Public Health, with a thesis on severe malarial anemia. . Following his doctoral studies, he spent three years at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he continued studying malaria, focusing on the Plasmodium falciparum parasite.
He returned to the University of Ghana in 2010 to establish his own research group. Without start-up funding, he used US credit cards to support his work whilst applying for grants, and two years later received funding from both the Royal Society and the National Institutes of Health.

Parasitology research

Awandare's research focuses on the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the infection it causes in children. His work focuses on both the immune response of the patient to infection, and the pathogenic processes of the parasite itself. In particular, he studies cell-surface receptors that could be potential vaccine targets and his studies use parasites from infected children in Ghana, so that any vaccines developed will be applicable to real-life cases.

WACCBIP

In 2013, Gordon Awandare led a consortium from the University of Ghana in a proposal to set up a new African Centre of Excellence to research infectious pathogens in Africa. The consortium consisted of faculty from the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology and the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, with support from staff of the University of Ghana Computing Systems. Following the award of $8 million from the World Bank in November 2013, Awandare became the Founding Director of The West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens. The organization has since received further funding from the World Bank ACE project and the Wellcome Trust DELTAS programme. The mission of WACCBIP is to "improve the diagnosis, prevention, and control of tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa by providing advanced-level training and research excellence in cell and molecular biology", with a remit to build capacity by training African scientists at masters, doctoral and post-doctoral levels. The center has expanded to study malaria, Buruli ulcer, HIV, and tuberculosis.

Awards and recognition

In 2015, Awandare was awarded the Royal Society Africa Award, which recognises innovative biological research scientists whose research also contributes towards significant capacity building in Africa. The award was made for "achievements in molecular and cellular studies of malaria, including how malaria parasites invade red blood cells and cause disease".