Maurice Godfrey, PhD

Professor, Munroe-Meyer Institute
Graduate Faculty Fellow
Director, MMI Science Education Partnership Award

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Phone: 402-559-6689

Maurice Godfrey, PhD, was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey, and graduate degrees, including the PhD in Pathobiology and Immunology from Columbia University in New York. He did a postdoctoral fellowship with the late David Hollister at the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children and the Oregon Health Sciences University in Oregon.

He has been a Graduate Faculty Fellow and Professor at the Munroe-Meyer Institute of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for more than 20 years. He spent a year as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Human Genetics of the University of Ghent, Belgium. With his late mentor, he pioneered immunohistochemical and molecular studies related to Marfan syndrome. He has been funded by the American Heart Association, the National Marfan Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Nebraska Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health. He has published numerous papers and book chapters and presented his research at meetings worldwide. His passion for mentoring and educating America’s youth began early in his training. High school and college undergraduate students he has mentored are now physicians, scientists, pharmacists and other professionals from coast to coast.

Since 2005, Godfrey has directed the Science Education Partnership Award at the Munroe-Meyer Institute. SEPA is a National Institutes of Health-funded program to bring science to schools and communities on Indian reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota. Godfrey also teaches courses in molecular biology, genetics and molecular basis of human disease.