http://www.pnas.org/content/80/13/4129.short Howard, R.J., Barnwell, J.W., and Kao, V.: Antigenic variation in Plasmodium knowlesi malaria: Identification of the variant antigen on infected erythrocytes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80: 4129–4133, 1983.

http://jem.rupress.org/content/159/6/1567.abstract Leech, J.H., Barnwell, J.W., Miller, L.H., and Howard, R.J.: Identification of a strain-specific malarial antigen exposed on the surface of Plasmodium falciparum infected erythrocytes. J. Exp. Med. 159:1567–1575, 1984.

Howard, R.J.: Antigenic variation of blood stage malaria parasites. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B307: 141–158, 1984.

http://jem.rupress.org/content/160/5/1585.abstract Aley, S.B., Sherwood, J.A., and Howard, R.J.: Knob-positive and knob-negative Plasmodium falciparum differ in expression of a strain- specific malarial antigen on the surface of infected erythrocytes. J. Exp. Med. 160: 1585–1590, 1984.〕 and in leading the commercialisation of one of the most important methods used widely today in molecular biology today called “DNA shuffling" or "Molecular breeding",〔(Stemmer, W.P.C. Molecular Breeding of Genes, Pathways and Genomes by DNA Shuffling. Biotechnol. Bioprocess Eng. 7: 121–129, 2002. )〕 a form of "Directed evolution".
His contributions to malaria research over an 18-year period began in Australia at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, then continued as a tenured Principal Investigator at the National Institutes of Health(NIH) in Bethesda, MD, USA, and continued at the biotechnology companies DNAX (now Schering-Plough Biopharma) and (Affymax ) in California. Thirteen years of his group's malaria research on antigenic variation in malaria〔〔(Leech, J.H., Barnwell, J.W., Aikawa, M., Miller, L.H., and Howard, R.J.: Plasmodium falciparum malaria: Association of knobs on the surface of infected red cells with a histidine-rich protein and the red cell skeleton. J. Cell Biol. 98: 1256–1264, 1984. )