Albany State University biology professor selected again to conduct research in Nigeria

Albany State University biology professor
selected again to conduct research in Nigeria

 

Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program
supports projects in Africa

Albany State University biology professor selected again to conduct research in Nigeria Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program supports projects in Africa

Olabisi Ojo

ALBANY, Ga. – Albany State University associate professor of biology Olabisi Ojo received a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) to advance research in microbial genomics and to strengthen microbiology curricula and pathogen genomics.

Ojo will collaborate with Sunday B. Akinde, professor of the Department of Microbiology at Osun State University (UNIOSUN) in Osogbo, Nigeria. The pair will focus on curriculum co-development, workshop organization in microbial genomics and graduate student mentoring in research. This will be Ojo’s second year as a fellow. In May 2016, he traveled to Ile-Ife, Nigeria to collaborate with the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU).

The ASU and UNIOSUN project is part of a broader initiative that will pair 55 CADFP scholars with one of 43 higher education institutions and collaborators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda to work together on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training, and mentoring activities in the coming months.

The visiting fellows will work with their hosts on a wide range of projects that include controlling malaria, strengthening peace and conflict studies, developing a new master’s degree in emergency medicine, training and mentoring graduate students in criminal justice, archiving African indigenous knowledge, creating low cost water treatment technologies, building capacity in microbiology and pathogen genomics and developing a forensic accounting curriculum. To deepen the ties among the faculty members and between their home and host institutions, the program is providing support to several program alumni to enable them to build on successful collaborative projects they conducted in previous years.

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its fifth year, is designed to increase Africa’s brain circulation, build capacity at the host institutions and develop long-term, mutually-beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya, which coordinates the activities of the Advisory Council. A total of 335 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.

Fellowships match host universities with African-born scholars (individually or in small groups) and cover the expenses for project visits of between 21 and 90 days, including transportation, a daily stipend, and the cost of obtaining visas and health insurance.

A full list of 2018 projects, hosts and scholars and their universities is available.

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