Abdoulaye Djimdé received a PharmD degree from École Nationale de Médecine et de Pharmacie of Bamako, Mali in 1988. In 2001, he obtained a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Since 2012, Djimdé is an Associate Professor of Parasitology-Mycology. He is currently the Head of the Molecular Epidemiology and Drug Resistance Unit of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Science, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako, Mali (USTTB). The primary goal of his research is to understand how the malaria parasite becomes resistant to antimalarial drugs and how that resistance spreads over time and space. With his team and collaborators, he conducts the field and laboratory-based analyses to explore how genetic events in the malaria parasite, the human host and the mosquito vector’s genomes relate to treatment outcome and the spread of drug resistance.
In addition to his own research, he was instrumental in the formation of the Worldwide Antimalarial Drug Resistance Network and served on the Scientific Advisory Board for several years. He was appointed as Chair of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Task Force within WHO-TDR. In 2009, he was appointed as one of two International Fellows at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He currently serves as coordinator of the West African Network for Clinical Trials of Antimalarial Drugs (WANECAM) and Leader of the Plasmodium Diversity Network-Africa (PDNA). He is the Founding President of the African Association for research and control of Antimicrobial Resistance (AAAMR) and Director of Developing Excellence in Leadership and Genetics Training for Malaria Elimination (DELGEME) in sub-Saharan Africa and the Director of Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC-Parasito). So far, He has co-authored over 135 peer-reviewed scientific publications.