Stella Ifeanyi Smith

Stella Ifeanyi Smith (PhD) is a director of research with the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria and professor of microbiology at Mountain Top University.

She holds a PhD in medical microbiology from the College of Medicine, University of Lagos (1997). She had her pre-doctoral fellowship with EU Scholarship at the Withington Hospital, Manchester, UK and post-doctoral fellowships at Bordeaux, France and Dresden and Munich, Germany, with INSERM and Alexander von Humboldt fellowships respectively.

Her special interest is in molecular epidemiology, antimicrobial resistance and microbiome of infectious diseases agents such as Helicobacter pylori, Salmonella spp, Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli, Enterohaemorraghic E. coli 0157:H7 and Vibrio cholerae.

She was a consultant to the Maastricht VI project, Italy, 2021 as well as the Real-World Gastritis Initiative (RE.GA.IN), Italy 2022 as the only African, with 29 countries involved.

She is the founding president of African Helicobacter and Microbiota Study Initiative Limited by Guarantee (AHMSI Ltd/Gte) with board members from 10 countries and 70 ordinary members spanning 17 African countries.

She is the co-chair of the Food-Borne Disease Genomic Surveillance Network, an initiative of African CDC, and the group is finalising the roadmap for disease surveillance in Africa. She is the head of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Research Group in NIMR.

In molecular biology hands-on-training, she has built capacity of over 720 students/participants with supervision/co-supervision of several BSc, MSc and PhD students. She is a reviewer for several international journals and editorial board member/special issue editor in some international journals.

She has been an external assessor for several professorial candidates internationally (South Africa and currently one from Canada).

She is a recipient of the 19th Edition of the Who is Who in the world and a member of the national Technical Working Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as well as the chairperson of the Institute Biorisk Management Committee and AMR Committee. She is a member of several international organisations.

She has attracted 16 research grants, both local and international and five equipment grants with several book awards.

She is a fellow of the prestigious Nigerian Academy of Science (FAS), fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Medicine Specialties (FAMedS), fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and International Federation of Biosafety Association (IFBA) certified. She has 205 peer-reviewed publications and a Google Scholar citation of 4741 and h-index of 36.