Dr. Maurice George Ekpenyong

MBBS (Sydney), FRACS (Paediatric Surgery)

Dr. Maurice Ekpenyong is an academic staff in the Department of Microbiology University of Calabar, who has risen through the ranks; from Assistant Lecturer in 2007 to Senior Lecturer in 2017. He received his undergraduate training in microbiology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he graduated top of his class in 1998. His masters and doctoral degrees were obtained from the University of Calabar in 2008 and 2013 respectively. The doctoral thesis on modeling and optimization of bacterial surfactant production was supported by grant from the Cross River State Government. As a microbial biotechnologist, he teaches industrial, pharmaceutical and petroleum microbiology, microbial physiology and genetics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is currently mentoring 8 postgraduate students, besides the over 100 undergraduate completed projects. He is both a reviewer and an editorial board member to many journals. His current research focuses on production of glutaminase-near-free L-asparaginase for treatment of lymphoblastic leukemia and other carcinomas, and the development of bioluminescent and chromogenic bacterial cocktail for use in ecosystem organic and inorganic species pollution bio-monitoring. He has intra/inter-institutional collaborations with scientists from statistics, geophysics, civil (environmental) engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry and pharmacy. Dr. Ekpenyong is a member of a number of professional associations including Nigerian Society for Microbiology, American Society for Microbiology and Nigerian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has published a total of 25 peer-reviewed articles and presented papers at local and international conferences. Dr. Ekpenyong is freely accessible at Scopus ID: 18633436600, Researcher ID: D-8215-2015, ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9601-5546 and Loop Profile ID: 1030234 (https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1030234/overview)..