Institution: University of Ibadan
Country: Nigeria
Georgina Odaibo is a Professor of Virology and the current Head of Department at the University of Ibadan with almost 25 years of teaching and research experience. She was a Research Fellow of Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwepen, Belgium, and a Visiting Scientist (Post-Doc) to learn virus cloning and sequencing techniques at the Biomedical Research Institute, Georg Speyer Haus, Germany.
In addition, she has training in the Biomedical/Biobehavioural Research Administrator Development (BRAD) Program from NIH, USA. She has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator of several national and international research grants, including the NIH-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative in Nigeria (MEPIN, 10 million USD), NIH-funded University of Ibadan MEPI Junior faculty research training (UI-MEPI-J, $600,000/year for 5 years), WHO-funded multi-country research on Respiratory syncytial virus among under-five children, just to mention a few. Currently, Prof Odaibo is the PI of the STRIPEN-HIV program (interprofessional education program) supported by HRSA through the University of California, San Francisco, as well as the in-country PI for the IDI/AFREhealth PROVE project. She has supervised 12 Ph.D. research projects and over 34 M.Sc. dissertations in virology. She rich experience in various laboratory techniques, including Tissue culture, ELISA, Western immunoblotting, conventional and Real-time PCR, DNA sequencing, Genomics, Bioinformatics etc.
For many years, she has mentored young faculty members, many of whom have become very successful in their specialties and have attained very high positions of responsibility. Such mentees have become mentors themselves in their various fields of endeavour.
Prof Odaibo is the first female Professor of Virology at the University of Ibadan and one of the topmost Virologists in Nigeria and Africa. She is an accomplished and eminent Academician and Researcher who has contributed significantly to the understanding of viral infections and implementation science in Nigeria and Africa. She was elected to the AFREhealth Governing Council in August 2024, and was recently elected the Vice-President (Africa) of the World Society of Virology. She is a member of the Skills Development and Training and the Research subcommittees of AFREhealth.
