Marcus Lacerda

A native of Taguatinga (DF, Brazil), Marcus Lacerda holds a medical degree from the University of Brasília, a specialization in Infectious Diseases from the Dr. Heitor Vieira Dourado Tropical Medicine Foundation (FMT-HVD), and a PhD in Tropical Medicine from the University of Brasília. Since March 2026, he has served as Director of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) at the World Health Organization (WHO), based in Geneva, Switzerland. A physician at FMT-HVD — where he served as Director of Education and Research from 2011 to 2018 — he is also a Public Health specialist at the Leônidas and Maria Deane Institute (FIOCRUZ-Amazonia), a faculty member of the Graduate Program in Tropical Medicine at Amazonas State University, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). He previously held Adjunct Professor positions at Kent State University and Tulane University. Throughout his career, he has supervised more than 80 undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and postdoctoral students and has authored over 500 scientific publications. He serves as a consultant and committee member within the WHO Global Malaria Programme and contributes to the WHO Guidelines Development Group (GDG) for Malaria Chemotherapy. A CNPq Research Fellow (Level 1B) in Medicine, he serves on the editorial boards of the Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical and Frontiers in Tropical Medicine. His research focuses on malaria, HIV, histoplasmosis, arboviruses, snakebite envenoming, COVID-19, and other emerging infectious diseases. Among his most significant contributions to public health in the Brazilian Amazon are the implementation of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the introduction of single-dose tafenoquine for the radical cure of Plasmodium vivax malaria, and the establishment of minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) for cause-of-death investigations — all pioneering initiatives in the region. He holds an h-index of 75 with 24,437 citations, has been awarded the Order of Scientific Merit (Commander rank) since July 2023, and has served on the CNPq Advisory Committee in Medicine since June 2024. He also coordinates the Telemal project, funded by SEIDIGI (Brazilian Ministry of Health), which delivers online teleconsultation on malaria and febrile illnesses across the Brazilian Amazon.