Oladele Ogunseitan is appointed UC Presidential Chair at UCI
Public health professor will promote interdisciplinary programs
Irvine, Calif., Sept. 4, 2019 — Oladele “Dele” Ogunseitan, professor and founding chair of the Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention at the University of California, Irvine, has been selected as a UC Presidential Chair.
During his five-year nonrenewable term, he will help advance campuswide goals of encouraging new or interdisciplinary program development and enhancing the quality of existing academic programs. His appointment marks only the second time a UCI faculty member has held the distinction.
“As a global scholar with an impressive record of leadership in his field and at UCI, Chancellor Gillman and I are pleased to appoint Professor Ogunseitan as a UC Presidential Chair,” said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Enrique Lavernia. “He has established innovative graduate and professional degree programs, including a highly ranked Master of Public Health degree and the first Ph.D. program in public health in the UC system.”
Ogunseitan – who joined UCI in 1992 – led the creation of one of the largest undergraduate public health programs in the U.S. In addition, he has collaborated with colleagues to develop dual degree programs in the School of Medicine and the School of Law and to recruit a faculty member split between the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies and the School of Social Sciences to address health disparities in underserved populations. And as part of the UC Global Health Institute, he heads an interdisciplinary effort to promote the implementation of global health minors and to devise courses that are open for cross-campus enrollment at all 10 UC sites.
Ogunseitan is a U.S. Department of State Jefferson Science Fellow and has been honored with UCI’s Excellence in Teaching Award, an Outstanding Mentoring Award from the American Society for Microbiology Board on Underrepresented Members, and a Leadership Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence from the American Council on Education.
He earned an M.P.H. at UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Tennessee.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.
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