Arjen Dondorp trained in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam as an infectious diseases and intensive care physician. His main research interests include the pathophysiology and treatment of severe malaria, antimalarial drug resistance (in particular artemisinin and multidrug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum), and the improvement of intensive care practice in developing countries. Building local research capacity is an integral part of all of his research activities.

He is currently the deputy director of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), an Oxford University overseas research unit embedded within the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand. The unit is an internationally recognised institute for tropical medicine research, with close to 800 staff working in 8 permanently manned research units in 5 countries. The clinical research activities of the AAP take place in approximately 50 clinical research sites across 17 countries in Asia and Africa. He heads the “malaria and critical illness” department, which runs multi-centre multi-country clinical trials on malaria and critical care in over 20 countries in Asia and Africa and has around 50 staff based in Bangkok and a network of staff employed at study sites. He is also currently Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford as well as Visiting Professor of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University. He chairs the Regional Steering Group overseeing a large regional grant from the Global Fund for the elimination of malaria in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK.