Professor Alan Cowman is an expert in the field of malaria and his work has determined how malaria parasites evade lethal effects of important antimalarial drugs. This knowledge allowed detection of drug resistant malaria parasites to understand prevalence and spread of drug resistance, important for developing public policy on antimalarial use. He developed tools to manipulate the parasite genome and constructed genetically attenuated parasites as novel avenues to develop vaccines which have progressed to human clinical trials. His work has identified new targets in the malaria parasite for development of antimalarials which are currently in development with Merck USA.