Education:
MSc – International Engineer: Gembloux Agro-BioTech – Université de Liège (5 years)
MSc – Biotechnologies – Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (2 years)
PhD – Virology – ULB (3 years)
Post-Doc – Virology – Emory University (2 years)
Post-Doc – Bacteriology – London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) (2 years)

Areas of Expertise:
Laboratory technologies, Quality Management Systems, Biosecurity & Biosafety, Laboratory systems, public health, vaccinology. IFBA certified in Biorisk Management.

Current position:
Since 2018, Senior team leader to implement a project to strengthen epidemiological surveillance and laboratory systems in the ECOWAS region (called “PROALAB”) at the West African Health Organization (WAHO) based in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. The backbone of the project is to supply laboratories with equipment and to support them to get the ISO15189 accreditation or equivalent, to implement biosecurity/biosafety, biomedical waste management systems, integrated biomedical samples transport systems and laboratory management informatized systems. Dr Olivier Manigart is also the Program Director of the Executive Management Unit of the regional West African BioRisk Management Network created in 2021. In this context, he has supported the training of many scientists in Biosecurity and Biosafety as well as the creation of biosecurity associations for the region.

Past experiences:
He first started working on HIV research in 1992 in Belgium and later in 1995 in Paris at Hopital Necker-Enfants Malades and the Pasteur Institute. In 1997, he travelled to Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso to become the lab Director of one of the sites of the first prevention of Mother-to-child transmission clinical trial in Africa (DITRAME).
From 2004 until 2009, he joined the Rwanda Zambia HIV Research Group, Emory University, Atlanta, and International Aids Vaccine Initiative and worked on the study of HIV transmission to improve the quality of future HIV vaccines, and, as a lab Director, was responsible for the implementation of several clinical and vaccine trials and an active member of the IAVI network in South and East-Africa. From 2009 until 2015, he joined the MenAfriCar consortium at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which aimed to evaluate the impact on meningococcal carriage in the meningitis belt of the new conjugate A vaccine developed by the Serum Institute of India, with the support of WHO and PATH, based in Bamako and at MRC-Gambia. In this context, he was the lab Coordinator of a network of 7 countries in the meningitis belt.
During his time as a researcher, Dr Olivier Manigart was the principal investigator (PI) and co-PI of several research projects on HIV/AIDS and meningitis.
Next, during almost two years, he worked as a consultant on the phase IV of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine as a senior epidemiologist at GSK Vaccines.