Prof Ovbiagele obtained his medical degree in 1991 from the University of Lagos (Nigeria); and then 3 subsequent graduate degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He began his academic career in 2002 as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at UCLA and became a Full Professor at UCSD in 2011.  

He has served as Director of the Olive View-UCLA Stroke Program, Director of the San Diego Veterans Affairs Health Care System Stroke Program, and Chair (Head) of the Department of Neurology at Medical University of South Carolina. He is currently Chief of Staff (Chief Medical Officer) at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System, as well as Professor of Neurology and Associate Dean at the University of California, San Francisco. 

The programmatic focus of his research is the development, dissemination and translation into practice and community, of evidence-based behavioral interventions to improve stroke outcomes. He led a clinical trial that utilized an intervention to improve post-stroke outcomes in Nigeria and co-led another study aimed at identifying unique environmental risk factors for stroke in Africans. He is currently leading studies examining the feasibility of a smart phone to enhance stroke outcomes in Ghana, impact of stroke risk indices among HIV patients on antiretroviral drugs in Ghana, efficacy of a polypill strategy to enhance stroke outcomes in Ghana, and genetic variants associated with stroke in people of African ancestry. 

He is Founding Editor-in-Chief of eNeurologicalSci (eNS), a scientific journal of the World Federation of Neurology, and he recently served as Chair of the International Stroke Conference Program (the premier scientific meeting on stroke in the world). He has published 450 peer review articles and edited 4 textbooks. He has directly mentored over 45 trainees/faculty members, been elected to fellowship status in several prominent organizations including the American Academy of Neurology and Royal College of Physicians, and in 2008 won the American Academy of Neurology Pessin Stroke Research Leadership Award.