Babatunde Ogunnaike, dean of the University of Delaware College of Engineering, has been awarded a fellowship from the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program.

The fellowship will enable him to spend 15 days in early 2017 at the University of Lagos, where he will work with Prof. Adetokunbo Denloye to review and strengthen the master’s program in chemical engineering.

Ogunnaike, who is also the William L. Friend Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UD, was born in Nigeria and earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Lagos.

His activities as a Diaspora Fellow will include curriculum development, mentoring and research collaboration, as well as training graduate students in research methodology, statistical design of experiments and analytical skills in chemical engineering.

In the area of curriculum development, he is expected to broaden the scope of courses being offered and introduce topics such as collaborative research, research tools, and mathematical and statistical models. He will also lead a two-day workshop with academic staff and invited participants from government and industry.

At the end of his visit, Ogunnaike — whose research group at UD works in the fields of control and systems theory, systems biology and product engineering — will lead a day-long workshop to explore joint research opportunities. Faculty from neighboring universities in Africa will be invited to broaden the scope of these opportunities.

“In addition to improving the preparation of graduate students in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Lagos, the project will stimulate cooperation between our institutions and promote collaborative research in areas such as environmental engineering and energy conservation,” Ogunnaike says.

The UD project is one of 69 projects that will pair African Diaspora scholars with higher education institutions in Africa to collaborate on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities. The fellows will conduct a wide range of projects across disciplines, from agroforestry and nursing to ethnomusicology and military mental health.

Now in its fourth year, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program has helped 239 African-born scholars who have been living and working in North America to connect with their peers at universities throughout Africa.

The program is designed to build capacity at the host institutions in Africa and to develop long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships between the universities. The fellowships are funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education.