Adaoha Ihekwaba

Biography

Adaoha Ihekwaba is a Research Scientist/mathematical modeller in the Gut Health and Food Safety Research Programme. Much of his work in these last five years has focused on the use of computational systems biology techniques to understand how the genetic and molecular machinery of the spore forming bacterium, Clostridium botulinum, connects with its environmental factors. And how these factors control or modulate botulinum neurotoxin production. This is part of an important current aspiration to include more molecular information into risk assessments for foodborne hazards. This modelling effort will strengthen the connection between biological mechanisms and botulism risk assessment and hazard management strategies. Prior to working on the systems biology of C. botulinum and other spore forming bacteria at the Institute of Food Research, he worked on the systems biology of other biological systems, including, NF-κB and p53 signal transduction systems, the Mammalian cell cycle, and the problem of morphogenesis in developmental biology. He was previously supported by John and Lucille Van Geest at the John Van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge. During my earlier post-doctoral years, and through competitively obtained support from the BBSRC (Wain Fellowship), Pfizer, and Microsoft Research, he was able to pioneer several experimental and theoretical techniques that allowed detailed studies of biological functions in several systems.

Research Interest

Food Safety