Dr. Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu, a Nigerian-American physician, forensic pathologist and neuropathologist, was the first to identify and report research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players. Concussion, a 2015 movie starring Will Smith, was inspired by Omalu's discovery and the response to it.
On September 30, 1968, Omalu, the sixth of seven siblings, was born in Anambra in southeast Nigeria. He enrolled in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka's medical college when he was 16 years old and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) in June 1990. To finish an epidemiology fellowship at the University of Washington, Omalu first moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1994. He moved from Seattle to New York City in 1995, when he enrolled in a residency training program in anatomic and clinical pathology at Columbia University's Harlem Hospital Center.
In 2015, the Bennet Omalu Foundation launched to fund research, raise awareness, provide support, and find cures for people suffering from CTE and traumatic brain injuries (TBI). The foundation's goal was to advance the humanity of science.
A few years later in 2019, Omalu received an Africa Peace Award from Sac State’s Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution (CAPCR). He said at the ceremony that "I’ll be talking about how we can all learn to be ourselves" and that "The best and greatest contribution each of us can make to humanity is to be who we are while ignoring conformational intelligence. I will use my personal story as an illustration.”
Omalu currently holds the positions of president and medical director of Bennet Omalu Pathology in Stockton, CA, as well as clinical professor of medical pathology and laboratory medicine at UC Davis.
We honor Dr. Bennet Omalu as our Person of the Month for September 2022 for his contributions to medicine and healthcare as a great physician, professor, and medical examiner.
