Resource Persons

Kamini Mendis,

M.B., B.S., MD., PhD., DSc.

Professor Emeritus Kamini Mendis is a malariologist and an internationally recognised medical scientist and public health expert. She was a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo where she led a research group the work of which has contributed to the science of malaria. Professor Mendis has made several original scientific contributions in the field of malaria and has contributed to training the next generation of scientists and building capacity in research and public health. Her work on the immunology of malaria including fundamental work on transmission blocking malaria vaccines and on the epidemiology of Plasmodium vivax have been seminal in the field. She has been honoured with the Presidential Award for Science in Sri Lanka, Vidhya Nidhi (1987); the prestigious Chalmers Medal of the Royal Society Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, UK (1991), and the Ashford Baily Medal of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, USA (1993). She has delivered several keynote addresses at celebrated scientific meetings including the Gorgas Memorial lecture, Washington, USA in 2000. She was instrumental in the planning and launch of the World Health Organisation’s global flagship, the Roll Back Malaria Initiative in 1998 and served as a senior professional in the World Health Organization until retirement. She is currently an adviser on tropical medicine, and health research to the Ministries of Health of Sri Lanka and other countries in the Southeast Asian region and to several international agencies in Europe and USA. She has served and serves currently on international expert committees on health including in the World Health Organisation, Geneva in the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee until 2018, and now in the Malaria Elimination and Certification. She is currently the co-chair of the Board of the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance.