Iruka N Okeke is a Professor and Calestous Juma Science Leaedrship Fellow at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her laboratory researches the molecular epidemiology, pathogenesis and drug resistance of enteric and bloodstream bacterial pathogens. She also studies the practice of clinical microbiology and genomic science in Africa. Her laboratory supports Nigeria’s Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System, coordinated by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, with genomic surveillance. Prof Okeke is the author of several scientific papers and chapters as well as the books Divining Without Seeds: The case for strengthening laboratory medicine in Africa (Cornell) and Genetics: Genes, Genomes and Evolution (Oxford). She is a senior editor of Microbial Genomics and the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of ASLM’s scholarly journal, the African Journal of Laboratory Medicine. Prof Okeke is a fellow of the Nigerian and African Academies of Science and the 2023 recipient of the Peter Wildy Prize from the UK Microbiology Society.