Martin Antonio is a Ghanaian biologist who is Principal Investigator at the Medical Research Council Unit (The Gambia) at

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public university, public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a constituent college, member institution of the University of London that specialises in public hea ...

. He is Director of the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...

Centre for New Vaccines Surveillance and leads the West and Central Africa Regional Reference Laboratory for Invasive Bacterial Diseases.

Early life and education

Antonio is from

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

. He moved to

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University ...

for his doctoral research, where he studied ''

Staphylococcus aureus ''Staphylococcus aureus'' is a Gram-positive spherically shaped bacterium, a member of the Bacillota, and is a usual member of the microbiota of the body, frequently found in the upper respiratory tract and on the skin. It is often posi ...

''. He moved to the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

as a research fellow in 2001.

Research and career

Antonio joined the Medical Research Council (the Gambia, MRCG) in 2005, where he set up the molecular biology research group. His research develops molecular diagnostics for tropical infections. He has led several multi-national research projects to better understand the causes and prevalence of pneumonia and diarrhoea. His research group developed large disease surveillance platforms across Africa, and became the

Reference Laboratory for Pneumococcal Disease. In 2016, Antonio started working with the

WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has 6 regional offices and 15 ...

on an outbreak of meningitis in Ghana. He leveraged the Medical Research Council (the Gambia) to identify the causative pathogens. In 2020 he was elected Fellow of the

African Academy of Sciences The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit, pan-African learned society formed in 1985. The AAS elects fellows ( FAAS) and affiliates. The AAS also awards the Obasanjo Prize for Scientific Discovery a ...

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Antonio, Martin Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of Queen Mary University of London Ghanaian biologists Academics of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Fellows of the African Academy of Sciences 20th-century biologists 21st-century Ghanaian biologists