Dr. Okobi Ekpo joined the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at Khalifa University in 2021, as an Assistant Professor in Anatomy and Cellular Biology. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Biological Sciences.
His previous faculty positions were at the University of the Western Cape, as well as the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was also an Adjunct Faculty at Pima College in Tucson, Arizona, during the Fall Semester of 2017, while serving as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence in the USA. Overall, Dr. Ekpo has more than 20 years of teaching and research experience at different institutions.
Dr. Ekpo obtained his doctoral degree in Anatomy from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and received additional research training in neuroscience at Loma Linda University in California, Missouri University in Columbia, USA, as well as the Katholieke University, in Leuven, Belgium.
His current research interests include understanding the neuroprotective properties of natural product formulations, especially in experimental models of stroke, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. He also investigates the mechanisms of, and novel treatments for, glioblastoma and neuroblastoma cancers in experimental model systems.
Dr. Ekpo has supervised/co-supervised many MSc and PhD students, published one book chapter and many journal articles, and also presented some of his research findings at local and international conferences.
Dr. Ekpo is an alumnus of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) schools and a member of the American Association for Anatomy (AAA), the Society for Neuroscientists of Africa (SONA) as well as the International Society for Neurochemistry (ISN).
