Bowen University Scholar emerges Nigeria’s first scientist to win Harvard Prestigious Fellowship

A Bowen University Professor of Environmental Microbiology, Olatunde Samuel Dahunsi has emerged as the first Nigerian Scientist to win the Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship in the 2022/2023 cohort of 50 fellows.

Dahunsi, a Research Professor at Bowen University, is one of the three Africans selected as Fellows in the 2022/2023 cohort and the first Nigerian scientist who broke the jinx and became the first ever Harvard Radcliffe Fellow in the Sciences, coming after Chimamanda Adichie who won the Fellowship in 2011/2012 on Fiction and Poetry, Ifeoma Fafunwa who won the Fellowship in 2017/2018 in Performing Arts and Chidi Ugwu the winner in 2020/2021 on Anthropology.

Olatunde Dahunsi will conduct research in renewable and sustainable energy generation, waste management and sustainable agriculture. He will as well work on a book that addresses the problems of waste management in developing nations by focusing on the development of a sustainable method of waste collection sorting and storage that contributes not only to solid waste management but also to the establishment of biorefineries that generate biofuel and biochemical products.

Dahunsi holds a PhD in microbiology and has published more than 90 research articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has earlier received grants from the Foundation of Science and Technology Development at Ton Duc Thang University for his study “Food Waste Biorefinery for Production of Platform Chemicals with a Circular Economy Approach.” He also received the prestigious INSA JRD-TATA Fellowship from the Indian National Science Academy and a TWAS-DFG Cooperation Visits Programme award to a research institute in Germany. He sits on the editorial board of 6 journals and serves as a reviewer for more than 60 others.

In his congratulatory message to Professor Olatunde Dahunsi, the Vice Chancellor of Bowen University Professor Joshua Ogunwole urged Professor Dahunsi not to rest on his oars and to use this opportunity to look into how to solve various problems in Nigeria and the world at large.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Havard University is one of the world’s leading centres for interdisciplinary research and exploration. The Institute provides invaluable support to scholars and students pursuing path-breaking research and creative projects. So far, about one thousand one hundred and ninety-five fellows have been awarded worldwide with only four from Nigeria.