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US Appoints Nigerian Scientist to Head Research Centre

The Punch
26 Mar 2008

The US government has announced the establishment of a new Centre for Genomics and Health Disparities to be headed by a Nigerian-born US-based scholar, scientist and researcher, Dr. Charles Rotimi, Empowered Newswire, a US-based Nigerian news agency has reported.

The announcement, made last week by the US-government owned National Institutes of Health in a statement, said "the centre would be known as the NIH Intramural Centre for Genomics and Health Disparities." It said "it would be a venue for research about the way populations were impacted by diseases, including obesity, diabetes and hypertension."

NIH is the US government's major medical research agency with 27 institutes and centres. It is part of the US government's Department of Health and Human Services, an equivalent of Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Health.

Under Rotimi's leadership, the centre is also expected to provide "training opportunities for students and established scientists from developing countries and from minority groups in the United States."

Rotimi, who was described as the "internationally renowned genetic epidemiologist," is based in the state of Maryland in the US, where the new centre is also located.

He is a graduate of the University of Benin where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 in Biochemistry, before travelling to the US to do a Master's Degree in Epidemiology at the University of Mississippi, 1983, and a second Master's degree-in Public Health, that is, -M.P.H. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1988.

In 1991 Rotimi completed his PhD. in Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. With over 80 published papers, Rotimi is known as a leader globally in his specialised area of Genetic research.
In 1992, a year after his PhD, he became an Assistant Professor at the Loyola University in Chicago, where he later rose to become Associate Professor.
In 1996, the US government recognised him and appointed him a Grant Reviewer at the NIH, where he rose to become a Senior Investigator and the acting director four years ago.

Rotimi's rise at the US government-owned NIH in Maryland coincided with his relocation from Loyola University to Howard University in Washington, DC, which borders Maryland immediately to the South. Howard is regarded as the best US black controlled university. He became Director of Genetic Epidemiology at Howard in 1999 and a full professor at the same university in 2003.

The Nigerian-trained scientists was elected Co-Chairman of the American Diabetic Association in 2001 and the President of the African Society of Human Genetics in 2004.

According to the statement,"a key focus of Rotimi's research is understanding the triangular relationship between obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, which together account for more than 80 per cent of the health disparity between African Americans and European Americans."

It was added that the genetic epidemiology models developed by Rotimi and his group were now "helping to address whether high disease rates are the result of exposure to environmental risk factors, genetic susceptibility, or an interaction between the two."

Besides, Rotimi is currently "engaged in the first genome-wide scan of an African American cohort, with the goal of identifying genes associated with obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. More than 2,000 participants from multigenerational African American families are enrolled in this large-scale genetic epidemiology study."

The new US institute headed by Rotimi will employ a Genomics approach, collecting and analysing genetic, clinical, lifestyle and socio-economic data to study a range of clinical conditions that have puzzled and troubled public health experts for decades.

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