Biography
Dr Samuel Chima Ugbaja popularly known as Dr Sparkle was appointed a Postdoctoral ResearchFellow in the Discipline of Traditional Medicine, School of Nursing & Public Health on 1 December 2024. Among others, his roles include facilitating the setting up of the Pre-Industrial Manufacturing facility in Hut 9, the integration of computational chemistry and drug design in our research and curriculum and Contributing to our research programme. He obtained a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Applied Chemistry with a second Class Upper (University of Calabar, Nigeria), a Master of Science (MSc) in Environmental Chemistry (University of Lagos, Nigeria), and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Medical Biochemistry (University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa). His recent duties as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the African Health Research Institute (AHRI) included the establishment of the African Population Cohorts Consortium (APCC). He worked with different workstreams such as Omics, Data/Methodology, Research Vision, and Objectives of the APCC. He co-supervised some postgraduate students as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Discipline of Laboratory Medicine and Medical Sciences at the College of Health Science, University of KwaZulu Natal. He has authored and published twenty-seven (27) academic papers which have over 145 citations within three (3) years.
Research Interests
Dr Ugbaja has recently obtained formal training such as Introduction to Bioinformatics (H3ABionet), African Genomics Medicine Training (H3ABionet), Bioinformatics and Mathematical Modelling (Biological Sciences, UKZN), Genomics Sequencing Bioinformatics (H3ABionet), and Data Science for Biology Workshop- Reproducible Data Analysis in R. He actively participated in the just concluded workshop on “Working with High Dimensional Data in R-Human Microbiome Applications. He has attended various national and international conferences such as the First Commonwealth Chemistry Congress, Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE), and the Health Informatics in Africa (HELINA), and the CHPC December 2024 National Conference where he had a poster presentation entitled “ Allostery Inhibition of BACE1in Alzheimer’s Disease Therapy.” His research areas include Computer-Aided Drug Design and Bioinformatics where he has already authored and published twenty-Seven (27) peer-reviewed academic papers within three (3) years.
