James Olopade is a Professor of Veterinary Anatomy at University of Ibadan where he obtained the DVM and PhD degrees. He had his postdoctoral trainings at Marine Biology Laboratory and Penn State College of Medicine (USA) and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at University of Wurzburg in Germany. He copyrighted the “Caudofrontal Depression of Olopade” which now provides a landmark for local anaesthesia for dehorning goats. Prof Olopade pioneered works on the neuroanatomy of unique African rodents including showing brain developmental milestones of the grasscutter, and the description of glial cells, adult neurogenesis, and myelinated cells of the olfactory system to the African Giant rat. Olopade’s laboratory has highlighted the role of vanadium, a major contaminant of Nigerian crude-oil on the brain, and pioneered chronic vanadium neurotoxicity studies over a life span in animal models. Consequently, using state-of-the-art facilities, the real-time predilection sites of vanadium deposits in the brain were described for the first time. He has previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, President of the Society of Neuroscientists of Africa, Councilor of the International Society for Neurochemistry, amongst others. Currently, Prof Olopade is the Principal Investigator of a €750,000 project funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for investigations on zoonotic arboviruses of pandemic potentials. Prof Olopade has examined Anatomy and Neuroscience theses and taught in Neuroscience schools across Africa, and have graduated 13 PhD students. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science, of the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria, and the College of Veterinary Surgeons Nigeria. Prof Olopade has been funded by Nigeria’s Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Cambridge Alborada, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation amongst others. He is the most cited veterinarian in Africa in the field of Neuroscience, and also in the top 10 rated anatomists on the continent.
