Meet Nigeria’s Doctor Onyema Ogbuagu, One of the Team Leads of Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Development
Mr Ogbuagu’s ground-breaking research in the field of modified genetic code has catapulted him into the public eye. He is an infectious Disease, Internal Medicine Specialist and an associate professor at Yale University.
Onyema Ogbuagu is a Nigerian-born researcher and medical doctor who has spent his career investigating some of the world’s most pervasive infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and Ebola, just to name a couple.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Ogbuagu’s ground-breaking research in the field of modified genetic code has catapulted him into the public eye, as he is one of the brains behind the research at Pfizer for the potential world’s first effective coronavirus vaccine.
Mr Onyeama is the son of the former vice-chancellor of Abia State University, Chibuzo Ogbuagu. His mother, Stella is a professor of sociology. And oh, Onyema has a twin brother who is an engineer.
Born in New Haven in Connecticut, which serves as home to the Ivy League Yale University in the US, Onyema returned to Nigeria to complete his university education only to go back to Yale school of medicine to work as the director of the institution’s HIV clinical trials programme.
The Nigerian medical official studied medicine at the University of Calabar in Cross River state and graduated in 2003. After graduation, he interned at the Ebonyi State University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Nigeria.
He then went back to the U.S where he also interned at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Elmhurst).
After becoming a fellow of infectious diseases, he rose to the height of an associate professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut. He has worked there for five years focusing on finding a cure for HIV/AIDS.
The associate professor has led several researches in the US and Africa. He worked in the faculty of the human resources for health programme in Rwanda where he mentored medical residents and junior faculty in clinical research projects locally relevant in addressing important infectious diseases-related problems (particularly HIV/AIDS and antimicrobial resistance).
He has also worked at the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons (LCPS).
