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Olufunmilayo Olopade was born in Nigeria in 1957 and was the fifth of six children born to an Anglican musician. Olopade first expressed interest in becoming a doctor at a young age because the Nigerian villages were scarce for doctors and medical resources, which were both in high demand.

Early Career
1980-1981: Olopade was a medical officer in a Nigerian naval hospital

1983-1984: Internal Medicine Intern at Cook County Hospital in Chicago

1984-1986: Became an Internal Medicine Resident at Cook County Hospital

1986-1987: Became Chief Resident

1991 - joined the faculty at the University of Chicago as an assistant professor in hematology and oncology

1991-Current: Pritzker School of Medicine

1992-Current: Director of Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics (University of Chicago)

Awards
1975: Nigerian Federal Government Merit Award

1978: Nigerian Medical Association Award for Excellence in Pediatrics

1980: Nigerian Medical Association Award for Excellence in Medicine

1990: Ellen Ruth Lebow Fellowship

1991: American Society for Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award

1992: James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award

2000:Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award

2003: Phenomenal Woman Award for work within the African-American Community

2005: Access Community Network’s Heroes in Healthcare Award

2005: $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

Olufunmilayo Olopade was one out of the three African-Americans to receive the $500,000 award. This award was appointed by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This “no strings attached” stipend grant was given as support for up to five years and was referred to as the “genius grant.” This grant allowed Olopade to continue her research on her groundbreaking discoveries on diseases and health concerns.

Research
Most of her research was on the susceptibility to cancer, which would then be used to adopt a more effective way of treating breast cancer among the African and African-American individuals and populations.

In 1987 at the University of Chicago, she found a gene that helped suppress tumor growth.

In 1992, Olopade helped found the University of Chicago’s Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics. Here she found that African-American women often developed breast cancer at younger ages than white women.

In 2003, she began a new study looking at breast cancer and genetics from African women from Nigeria to Senegal and also African-American women in Chicago. By 2005 she found that 80% of tumors in African women did not need estrogen to grow compared to 20% of tumors in Caucasian women. She also found that this was due to a different pattern of gene expression between the African women and the Caucasian women.