The DVC R&D

Iyeopu Minakiri Siminialayi is a Professor of Endocrine Pharmacology. He was best Graduating Student in Pathology in 1991 and won Prof Mabadeje’s Prize for Best Graduating Student in M.Sc. Pharmacology in 2003.

Employed by the University of Port Harcourt on July 1, 1994 as Lecturer II in the Department of Pharmacology, he rose to Professor in October 2010. Prof. Iyeopu Siminialayi is a respected pharmacologist/endocrinologist who is widely cited for his work on metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus and malaria. He has reported that diet even in the absence of obesity is a major determinant of the metabolic syndrome, that low HDL cholesterol is a poor determinant of the condition, that abdominal obesity even with a normal BMI is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk in Nigerians and that extracts of marine crabs inhibit the replication and growth of Bordetella pertusis.

He has benefitted from Travel Grants from Pfizer, Ugo Basil URL and the University of Port Harcourt and got a grant as Director of the Centre for Malaria Research and Phytomedicine for malaria eradication and phytomedicine from the Niger Delta Development Commission. He has over 90 published articles, some of which were the result of multi-centre studies and has supervised 16 M.Sc. projects, one of which won third prize at the NUC National research fair held in Abuja in 2012 and 10 Ph.Ds.

He has been listed in the Webometrics rankings of top 800 scientist in Nigeria published in 2015 and in the recent ranking of scientists by the AD Scientific Index. He is currently Sylvanus JS Cookey Professor of Malaria Studies, Provost of the College of Health Sciences, member of MDCN, member Governing Board of the UPTH and is serving as the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Development of the University of Port Harcourt.

He has previously served as Acting Vice Chancellor and Chairman of Senate of the University of Port Harcourt. He is a member of the Nigeria Medical Association, the West African Society for Pharmacology, the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and the American Society of Functional foods, among others. His research interests include obesity, diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, malaria and infectious diseases, and food as medicine.