Prof Martin Donnelly

Professor of Evolutionary Genetics and Honorary Faculty at the Wellcome Sanger Institute

Martin Donnelly is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He works in collaboration with the Sanger Institute Malaria Programme and focuses on insecticide resistance in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae.

Martin’s group studies the evolutionary genetics of insect disease vectors. A major area of interest is the evolution of insecticide resistance in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae. Working in collaboration with Dominic Kwiatkowski and the Sanger Institute Malaria Programme, Martin’s group leverages the power of next-generation sequencing technologies to address aspects of the biology of Anopheles gambiae that impact upon the sustainable control of malaria. This includes genome wide association studies (GWAS) to identify genetic loci associated with insecticide resistance and population genetic studies to describe population sub-structuring.

Martin Donnelly trained at Girton College, Cambridge University (MA) and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (MSc, PhD). He was then awarded an American Society of Microbiology Fellowship and spent two years in the laboratory of Dr Tovi Lehmann at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA (1999-2001). He rejoined the Vector Group at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2001.