Dr. Akinlolu (“Ojo”) Ojo has served as the Executive Dean at the University of Kansas (KU) School of Medicine since 2019.  He was the Associate Vice President for Clinical Research at the University of Arizona (UA), Tucson. He also previously served as the inaugural Florence E. Bingham Research Professor and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he was on faculty for 23 years.

Dr. Ojo received his medical education at the University of Lagos in Nigeria and an MPH in global health from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He continued his graduate medical education as an internal medicine resident and chief resident at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. He went to the University of Michigan for his clinical and research fellowship in nephrology where he also earned a Ph.D. in epidemiology and an executive MBA.

Dr. Ojoʼs clinical and research interests are varied and include racial health disparities, chronic kidney disease, kidney transplantation, precision medicine and global health. He has received more than $230 million as principal investigator/program director in National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal grant funding. His most impactful NIH-funded research grants include the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK), the All of Us Research Program in both Arizona and Kansas, and the historic Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Kidney Disease Research Network. As the dean and chief academic officer of the only public medical school in Kansas, he oversees a 3-campus school with an enrollment of 865 M.D. and M.D./Ph.D. students and 450 doctoral and masterʼs degree trainees. In his clinical practice, Dr. Ojo has been named to the “Best Doctors in America” multiple times and served as the co-Chair of the Management Board of the Banner University Medicine – an academic medical center partnership between Banner Health and the University of Arizona.

Dr. Ojo has over 220 peer-reviewed publications and serves on editorial boards, Data Safety Monitoring Boards, an FDA Advisory Committee and numerous NIH study sections including recently as the Chair of NIAID Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation (AITC) study section. He has been elected to a number of honorific societies, including the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the American Clinical and Climatological Association (ACCA), the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP).