Ashley J. Birkett PhD

Dr. Ashley Birkett was appointed Director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), a product development program of PATH, in October 2013, having first joined PATH in 2008 as MVI’s director of research and development (R&D). As director of R&D at MVI, Ashley led the Transmission-Blocking Vaccine Priority Area, which is focused on the execution of a fully integrated product development plan (i.e., from R&D through commercialization) for vaccines to accelerate malaria elimination and eradication. He also guided MVI’s portfolio of evaluation technology projects, which develop and refine ways to assess vaccine efficacy prior to large-scale field trials, and provided technical support across the range of MVI’s vaccine development projects.

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.