Túlio de Oliveira

Tulio de Oliveira is a Brazilian, Portuguese, and South African permanent resident professor of bioinformatics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and associate professor of global health at the University of Washington. He has studied outbreaks of chikungunya, dengue, hepatitis B and C, HIV, SARS-CoV-2, yellow fever and Zika. During the COVID-19 pandemic he led the team that confirmed the discovery of the Beta variant of the COVID-19 virus in 2020 and the Omicron variant in 2021.

He gained fellowships to the University of Oxford, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and the University of Edinburgh and in 2015 was appointed professor. In 2017, he founded the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) and in 2021 he founded the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI), to sequence and trace epidemics.

Early life De Oliveira was born in Brazil. He completed his MSc and PhD at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 2018, the year prior to completing his fellowship at Edinburgh, he was appointed as an associate professor of Global Health at the University of Washington. He has hypothesised that large groups of previously-infected people with declining immunity directly drive the emergence of variants of concern. If simultaneously there is a high level of transmission, then declining individual immunity may fail to prevent re-infection and if the virus is not cleared in enough people, new dangerous mutations may become more likely, as the virus survives and goes on to infect more people. After first alerting authorities to the Omicron variant in South Africa, de Oliveira contended that the origin is unknown; he has "insisted that just because it was first detected in South Africa doesn't mean that's where it originated". He reported that it was possible that Omicron came from elsewhere as O. R. Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, was the largest in Africa.

Recognition and awards De Oliveira was included in a list of ten scientists with important roles in scientific developments in 2021 compiled by the scientific journal Nature. He received the Gold Medal Award from the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) in 2022. In the same year, for his contributions to society, he received the Batho Pele Award from the Government of South Africa. His name was included in the Time's 2024 100 influential people in health.

In May 2026, De Oliveira was bestowed the National Order of Mapungubwe by the South African Government for his contributions to contribution to discovery of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.