What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your research
In my main occupation, I am currently a senior academic staff at the Molecular Genetics Informatics (MGI), Department of Anatomy, Bauchi State University, Nigeria. My work primarily involves deciphering the regulatory pathways that drive tumour recurrence and progression as well as dissecting the genetic susceptibility of cancer among Africans. Additionally, I work in an international team of scholarly professionals at AfricArXiv – the pan-African Open Access portal – towards increased discoverability of African research output. My role involves facilitating manuscript submission moderation and quality assurance as well as representing AfricArXiv at international meetings, events and webinars. At the Science Communication Hub Nigeria, I support a team that provides mentorship, implements training and community building for the next generation of Nigerian scientists.
Being trained in molecular and cancer biology at Genetics and Regenerative Medicine Research Centre of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and the Malaysia Genome Institute during my PhD has shaped my understanding and skills in experimental cancer biology. Here, I worked on a project that focused on developing targeted therapy for human bladder cancer with primary focus on genomics and transcriptomics through bioinformatics analyses of NGS data such as transcriptome (RNA-Seq) and whole genome sequencing (WGS) data.
What are you excited about in science communication?
To me, scholarly and scientific communications is intertwined with open science and preprints in the life sciences and biomedical research community. Designing an experiment in the laboratory, conducting the research and communicating the findings to the public is what really excites me. I would like to further explore how the publishing industry and preprint servers share these scientific findings to promote open science and open scholarly communication. I am also excited about sharing codes, and life science datasets publicly on Github repository to promote reproducibility and data science training. Translating scientific papers through science journalism to foster public understanding of science and remove the misconception among the general public is also something that I am passionate about. I am a strong advocate for community building that supports the data-intensive biomedical research community and preprints services among underrepresented groups in STEM. You can occasionally meet me on Twitter, sharing science and most of the time on Github, organising codes and repositories.
Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellow program?
I have been very passionate about open science and preprints since 2016, and that brought me to AfricArXiv. I applied for the ASAPbio Fellow Program to acquire more knowledge and skills about preprints and keep up to date with the current trend in preprints. Participating in this fellowship will create opportunities for me to connect with many scientists in the open science ecosystem, and will provide me with the necessary skills needed to raise awareness for preprints and further develop the existing preprints services to drive the conversations on their use in the scientific community. I would also want to share my experience and provide my support to my immediate communities, colleagues and collaborators who advocate as well for preprints and open science. I am excited to have been selected and accepted for this fellowship.
Ask me about…
….anything genetics, bioinformatics, computational genomics, open science, preprints, AfricArxiv, bladder cancer and data science 🙂