Prof. Patel was born in 1954. His early education was at Nairobi School and Lindisfarne College (Wales). He obtained his BSc (Hons) degree from the University of Nairobi and proceeded to University of California, Irvine, for a Ph.D. degree. After a post-doctoral training at University of California, Davis, Prof. Patel returned to Kenya and joined the University of Nairobi in 1989 where he has taught physiology and neuroscience. Prof. Patel is a member of several national and international scientific societies: Kenya Society of Neuroscientists, Society of Neuroscientists of Africa (SONA), International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), and Society for Neuroscience (USA), New Year Academy of Science and International Society for Neurochemistry. He was the Secretary-General of SONA for eight years and has served on the Africa Regional Committee of IBRO. He is the current Chairman of the Department of Medical Physiology, College of Health Science, and University of Nairobi. Prof. Patel has published research papers on nerve synaptic formation, Alzheimer’s disease, trypanosomiasis and Catha edulis Forsk (miraa). His research interest is the use of neuroscience behavioral techniques to study neurobiology problems unique to Africa. With Dr. Andreas Kopf, Free University of Berlin, he edited “Guide to Pain Management in Low Resource Setting” for the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Over the years, Prof. Patel has organized workshops and conferences to promote research, training and teaching in neuroscience in Kenya and Africa.