Fisayo Olotu

Biography

I attended Ekiti state university, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria where
I bagged my B.Sc award in Biochemistry. My interest in cancer research made me proceed to the University of Ibadan for my M.Sc degree in Biochemistry with a specialization in Cancer Research and Molecular Biology. However, during the course of my masters' program, I acquired basic skills in computational biology such as molecular modeling, molecular docking, structural analysis. This motivated me to proceed for my Ph.D. in computational biology and currently, I am undertaking my Ph.D. study at the Molecular Bio-Computation and Drug Design Laboratory, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Health Sciences, Kwazulu-Natal University, Durban, South Africa, under the esteemed supervision of Prof. Mahmoud Soliman. My research focus is to mirror biological processes such as drug binding and mutational occurrences relative to their molecular implications in a wide range of diseases. This is to enhance broad-spectrum drug design and discovery processes, most especially for 'difficult-to-treat' diseases. During my Ph.D. I served as the research assistant playing various academic, supervisory and mentorship roles. I concluded my Ph.D. studies with outstanding outputs measured by high-impact scientific articles and distinguished individual awards. I worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Molecular Bio-computation and Drug Design Lab, UKZN. Currently, I am working as a postdoctoral drug discovery scientist at the Research Unit in Bioinformatics (RUBi) group, Rhodes University, South Africa, under the esteemed supervision of Prof. Ozlem Tastan Bishop.