Faculty Profile

Biography

Usman Sunusi joined the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine School of Dental Medicine in Bradenton, Florida, in 2025 as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry. He earned his medical degree and Master of Science in Medical Microbiology from Bayero University Kano, Nigeria, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Dr. Sunusi brings over a decade of academic experience, including five years of university-level teaching. From 2015 to 2020, he served as a lecturer at Bayero University Kano, where he taught courses in medical biochemistry and molecular biology to medical and allied health sciences students. He also provided hands-on instruction in clinical biochemistry, emphasizing test principles, sample preparation, result interpretation, and clinical relevance. In addition to teaching, he supervised undergraduate and graduate research projects and held leadership roles as Biochemistry Course Coordinator and Level Coordinator for first- and second-year medical students. His contributions extended to curriculum development and student mentorship.

As a Graduate Research Assistant at UPM and later Postdoctoral Fellow  at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Dr. Sunusi studied both environmental and clinical disease mechanisms. His graduate research focused on the effects of microplastics exposure, identifying potential biomarkers of toxicity through gut microbiome and metabolome analysis. During his postdoctoral fellowship, he developed a novel mouse model of hypereosinophilia-associated heart disease, uncovering the molecular mechanisms by which eosinophils drive cardiac damage and identifying potential biomarkers of disease progression. This work has been published in leading scientific journals.

Dr. Sunusi is an active member of the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine, the American Heart Association, and the International Eosinophil Society. He received the 2024 ADLM SYCL Travel Grant Award and the 2025 Ohio Valley Section ADLM Award. He has presented his work at national and international meetings, including the ADLM Annual Meeting, where one of his posters received Honorable Mention in the 2025 Student Research Awards Poster Competition, and the Experimental Hematopathology Conference. His current research focuses on clinical chemistry, particularly in endocrine testing, tumor markers, cardiac and neurodegenerative diseases, with the goal of improving disease understanding and advancing diagnostic practice.