Iruka N Okeke is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a Fellow of the Nigerian and African Academies of Science. Her research group investigates the mechanisms bacteria use to colonize humans, cause disease and gain drug resistance. She also studies laboratory practice in Africa. Iruka is a member of Nigeria’s Technical Working Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and her laboratory currently provides the genomic surveillance service for Nigeria’s antimicrobial resistance surveillance system as part of a collaborative UK National Institute for Health-supported Global Health Research Unit. Iruka has served as a volunteer drug resistance consultant to Africa CDC, WHO and other organizations.

Iruka received B.Pharm., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), Nigeria and post-doctoral training at the University of Maryland, USA and Uppsala Universitet, Sweden. She has held Fulbright, International Federation for Science, Branco Weiss (Society-in-Science) and Institute for Advanced Studies (Berlin) fellowships as well as academic positions in Nigeria, the UK and the USA. Iruka is author/ co-author of several scientific articles and chapters as well as the books Divining Without Seeds: The case for strengthening laboratory medicine in Africa (Cornell Univ Press) and Genetics: Genes, Genomes and Evolution (Oxford Univ Press). She editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Laboratory Medicine.