Dr. Emmanuel O. Akala is an internationally recognized pharmaceutical scientist, academic leader, and innovator in drug delivery and nanomedicine. He serves as Co-Founder and Vice President of Drug Delivery & Nanomedicine at OncoVanta Therapeutics, where he leads the strategic development of advanced formulation systems, nanotechnology-enabled delivery platforms, and translational drug product design to support the company’s precision oncology pipeline.

At OncoVanta, Dr. Akala oversees the integration of targeted delivery technologies with engineered cell and immunotherapy platforms, ensuring scalable, scientifically rigorous approaches to therapeutic optimization and future combination strategies.

In parallel, Dr. Akala is a Professor of Pharmaceutics at Howard University, where he directs the Laboratory for Nanomedicine, Drug Delivery, and Pharmaceutical & Biopharmaceutical Drug Products Design and serves as Chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). His research focuses on innovative drug delivery systems, nanotechnology-based therapeutics, and quality-by-design (QbD) approaches for complex pharmaceutical products.

Dr. Akala earned his Bachelor of Pharmacy and M.Sc. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria) and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Manchester, England, as a Commonwealth Scholar. He completed postdoctoral training as an NIH Fellow in Pharmaceutics and Bioengineering and held a DAAD research fellowship in Germany.