NIDS Annual General Meeting &
Scientific Conference2022

Prof. Oyewale Tomori is a member of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. He is the immediate past President of the Nigerian Academy of Science with experience in virology, disease prevention and control. He was at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria) from 1971 to 1994. He later served as the pioneer Vice Chancellor of the Redeemer’s University in Nigeria from 2004 to 2011.

From 1994 to 2004, he was a virologist for the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Africa Region, establishing the African Regional Polio Laboratory Network. In 1981, he was recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for contributions to Lassa fever research. In 2002, he received the Nigerian National Order of Merit, the country’s highest award for academic and intellectual attainment and national development. He has authored/co-authored over 150 scientific publications.

Dr Tomori has served or continues to serve on numerous advisory committees, including: (nationally) – Chair, Lassa Fever Steering Committee, National Laboratory Technical Working Group, Expert Working Group on Polio Eradication and Routine Immunization,  and (internationally) – WHO SAGE, WHO Africa Regional Polio Certification Committee, WHO Group of Experts on Yellow Fever Disease, Chairman WHO Yellow Fever Emergency Committee on International Health Regulations, GAVI Board, Vice Chair of U.S. National Academy of Medicine Global Health Risk Framework Commission, and World Bank Interagency Working Group on Financing Preparedness and Response. He served as Laboratory Planning and Quality Monitoring Adviser to the WHO-AFRO Regional Director and as Chairman, Ministerial Expert Advisory Committee on Covid19 Health Sector Response, of the Nigerian government. He is an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, Board Chair of Biovaccines Nigeria Ltd. and a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute, Texas A&M University.

MBBS (IB), FWACP, Dip. Chest Medicine (RCP, UK), FCCP (USA), FRCP (Edin), FRCP (Lond.)

Prof. Gregory Erhabor is an outstanding scholar, researcher and teacher. He is one of the foremost chest physicians in Africa. He singlehandedly established the Respiratory Unit of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. In his early career, he made great breakthroughs in Asthma and did pioneering works in Exercise-Induced Asthma in Nigeria and Perception of Asthma and Breathlessness at the Lung Exercise Respiratory Department, Bristol Royal Infirmary, United Kingdom. He also pioneered research in Directly Observed Short-Course Therapy (DOTS) in Tuberculosis, in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

He is a Fellow of the West African College of Physicians (FWACP), American College of Chest Physicians (FCCP), and the Royal Colleges of Physicians in Edinburgh (FRCP Edin) and London (FRCP Lond). He won the prestigious British Thoracic Society Award, being the only one awarded among the 70 people shortlisted globally. He has demonstrated academic leadership and has been involved in teaching and mentoring younger colleagues who have gone on to make outstanding breakthroughs in their careers. He has supervised over 36 residents who have successfully defended their dissertations and has co-supervised numerous others in other teaching hospitals. He has won numerous awards including ‘Making a Difference’ Award by American College of Chest Physicians in Philadelphia (2008), and Humanitarian Award in Asthma by American College of Chest Physicians in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2012.

He has taken several positions in the West African College of Physicians, prominent among which was Chief Examiner, Faculty of Internal Medicine. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the West African Journal of Medicine, a journal that serves Physicians and Surgeons in the West African Subregion, and has taken it to enviable heights, to the extent that they now publish monthly. He was former President of the Nigerian Thoracic Society and former Chairman, STOP-TB, Nigeria. He was the first international regent and governor of American College of Chest Physicians in Nigeria. He is presently an Executive Committee Member of the Council of Global Governors of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP). In the recent past, he served as Vice-Chair of the Chronic Lung Disease division of International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (IUATLD) based in Paris for three years, after being programme secretary for many years. Currently, he is a member of the 8-Member Governing Board of the Nigerian National Merit Award.

He was the Principal Investigator and Chair of the global multi-centre study – Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease Study (BOLD Study II), Nigeria Centre. He has written over one hundred and twenty (120) articles in peer reviewed national and international journals and has authored several books and chapters in respiratory medicine, including – Pulmonary Function Tests: Spirometry and Peak Flow in Clinical Practice & Asthma: Basic Principles and Management Strategy, and has published several booklets on asthma, tuberculosis and other chest diseases. He founded the Asthma and Chest Care Foundation that reaches out to people round the world.

Gemma Alderton received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Sussex, where she researched DNA damage and cell cycle signalling pathways and their deregulation in human disease with Penny Jeggo. Having established an interest in cell cycle signaling she worked as a postdoc in John Diffley’s lab at the Cancer Research UK Clare Hall laboratories, investigating the control of the G1/S checkpoint signaling in mammalian cells. In October 2006 she moved to Nature Reviews Cancer to continue to explore her broad interest in pathological cell signaling. In 2017, she became the biology Perspectives editor at Science and is now Deputy Editor of the Insights section at the journal, she commissions and publishes Perspectives and Reviews across biology, but especially in biomedicine.