Obidimma Ezezika

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Ezezika has worked and consulted for diverse organizations such as the United Nations Development Program, Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the Ministry of Science and Technology, Nigeria, the Sandra Rotman Centre, Yale’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and Grand Challenges Canada. His research interests lie at the nexus of trust-building, biotechnology development, food security, and global health innovation. After his PhD at the University of Georgia, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, investigating the molecular basis of cellular motility and cytokinesis through structural biology approaches and x-ray crystallography. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship, he was appointed a Senior Research Fellow at the Sandra Rotman Centre, Toronto, where he developed a trust-building model for a $48 million international food security program, working in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa and Tanzania. He went on to establish the African Centre for Innovation & Leadership Development (ACILD), a nonprofit think tank focused on building leadership and innovation capacity in Africa. Through ACILD, he led the creation of a number of health innovations, including the NutridoTM system, a gamification platform for improving adolescent nutrition. Prior to joining the faculty at UTSC, he was a Grand Challenges Fellow at the United Nations Every Woman Every Child Innovation Marketplace, where he worked with a variety of global health stakeholders, including the Gates Foundation and USAID, to take high-impact innovations from the bench to the bedside and improve the health of women, children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries. Dr. Ezezika leverages his global experience and multidisciplinary expertise to provide students with the best education, training and experience possible.