Sequel to her sterling contributions to research, scholarship, massive attraction of grants to the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases and having met the stipulated criteria for the attainment of the research professorship position at the Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, the Governing Council has appointed Dr. Anise Happi as a Research Professor in the university.
Professor Happi obtained a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree in 2001, a Masters degree in Veterinary Sciences (Clinical Pathology) in 2004 and PhD in Veterinary Pathology (Molecular Pathology) in 2010, all from the premier University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is also a Fellow of the College of Veterinary Surgeons of Nigeria.
After her Ph.D degree in Veterinary Medicine, she obtained a World Health Organization postdoctoral training fellowship in Molecular Biology at Harvard University in 2012. She joined the Department of Veterinary Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine as a lecturer in 2010 and served there for 10 years.
During her sojourn at the University of Ibadan, she established and led the Molecular Diagnostic Pathology unit and laboratory in the Department of Veterinary Pathology from 2012-2020. She also taught several undergraduate and postgraduate courses and served as a Postgraduate coordinator in her Department where she had also supervised undergraduate students and postgraduate students at Masters and PhD levels.
Professor Mrs. Happi voluntarily resigned her appointment at the Department of Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan in 2020. In order to reinforce and complement ACEGID’s leadership position in genomic research in Africa, she was brought on board in January 2021, as the Head of Zoonotic Research and Surveillance at the centre. On the recommendation of the advisory board, she was appointed the Deputy Director Zoonotic research and surveillance in 2022.
On the research front, she has published 32 papers, most of which appeared in top tier International peer-reviewed journals with very high impact factors, such as Science (Impact factor: 56.9), Nature Medicine (Impact factor: 82.9), Nature Microbiology (Impact factor: 30.96), Nature Communications (Impact factor: 17.69), PLoS Biology (Impact factor: 9.59), Viruses (Impact factor: 5.81) and many others. She is the first author to attain 56% (18 of 32) of her publications. Professor Anise Happi’s publications have a total combined impact factor of 393.01.
Since joining ACEGID, her transformational prowess has led the centre into the field of Zoonotic research. She has also proven to be a unique asset to the centre, through the numerous International research grants that she has attracted. Professor Anise Happi has been involved at the African Centre of Excellence in the capacity of a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator in 12 research grants. It is also on record that since she came on board, she has attracted ten of the twelve grants which are presently ongoing.
The above achievements and impacts are evidence that, Professor Anise N. Happi is is no doubt a super high flyer, and is on a class of her own for a female faculty and researcher in Africa.
