Professor Brian Greenwood is a physician, biomedical research scientist, and academic. He is the Manson Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is an advisor to the WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and several other philanthropic organizations.

Professor Greenwood spent 13 years in Nigeria at University College, Ibadan and at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, followed by 16 years in The Gambia, where he directed the UK's Medical Research Council Laboratories. Since 1996, he has been based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where from 2000 – 2008 he coordinated the Gates Malaria Partnership, a program of malaria research and capacity development in several countries in Africa.

In 2008, he became the coordinator of a new malaria capacity development initiative, the Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC), which supports PhD and post-graduate training in malaria in five universities in sub-Saharan Africa.  He also co-ordinates the African Meningococcal Carriage Consortium (MenAfriCar), supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust.

In his ten years' experience working in Nigeria, and his fifteen years as the head of the Medical Research Council Laboratories in the Gambia, his main research interests were malaria and infections caused by capsulated bacteria such as the meningococcus (Neisseria meningitidies). He has been in the forefront of those who are encouraging the use of chemically treated mosquito nets to shield sleeping villagers from attack by the malaria-infected insects. He is an investigator in a trial of a new combined pneumococcal protein and conjugate vaccine currently underway in The Gambia and in a phase 3 trial of the malaria vaccine RTS'S/AS01.

Professor Greenwood received his degree in medicine from the University of Cambridge in 1962. He has published over 700 papers in peer-reviewed journals on a variety of infectious diseases although primarily malaria. Professor Greenwood was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honors for services to malaria research in Africa. He is also the first recipient of the first Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize.