Undergrad to Graduate School
Born in Nigeria, Dr. Emezue earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Niger Delta University before completing national service with the Nigerian Youth Service Corps, working on United Nations MDG/SDG‑aligned projects. In 2014, he moved to the United States to pursue graduate training at the University of Missouri, earning a Master of Public Health (MPH) and a Master of Public Affairs (MPA). His capstone examined health service use among Black men with lived experiences of police violence.
Doctoral Work & Research Foundations
Dr. Emezue entered the PhD program in Nursing and Healthcare Innovations at the University of Missouri in 2016, mentored by two brilliant and deeply supportive co‑advisors, Dr. Linda Bullock and Dr. Tina Bloom. His dissertation explored rural young males’ perceptions of dating‑violence risk and their preferences for digital prevention tools.
Between 2019 and 2021, Dr. Emezue contributed to externally funded projects focused on co‑developing digital interventions with adolescents and emerging adults. As a lead research assistant with a pioneering team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, he supported the adaptation and field‑testing of the CDC‑funded myPlan app—conducting interviews and focus groups with teen survivors of dating violence and testing multiple prototypes that informed a national randomized controlled trial with 700 rural and urban adolescents. Dr. Emezue also worked with Dr. Blaine Reeder’s Precision START Lab, evaluating wearable devices and a mobile clinical decision‑making platform.
Early Professional Roles
From 2015 to 2017, Dr. Emezue served as the founding Director and Head of Research and Communications at the Brady and Anne Deaton Institute. His early community and global health work included leading SDG‑aligned projects in underserved regions of Nigeria—distributing insecticide‑treated bed nets, mitigating erosion, planting shade trees in public schools, and organizing breast‑cancer awareness programs for women in rural communities. More recently, he served as an external consultant for the UNICEF Innocenti Office of Research, contributing to a rapid evidence‑gap map on global child labor and interventions that support affected children.
Creative Interests and Personal Life
Outside the lab and classroom, I like to think I have decent taste in photography, reading, and indoor plants (though the plant graveyard it took to get here might disagree). My bookshelf leans toward magical realism, historical fiction, and creative nonfiction. My own writing often wanders into satire and explores gender, identity, and resilience. I also dabble in photography—urban, product, and realist images, mostly.
You’ll find select samples of my writing and photography throughout this site—proof that I do, in fact, have a life.
See my CV for additional affiliations and fellowships.