Gideon Barak Agembo Okelo is currently the Executive Director and Secretary General of the African Academy of Sciences having been the Secretary General of the organization since 1989. He is also Professor of Medicine at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He is also a Senior Consultant Physician, specialist in Infectious Diseases and a Global Authority on Echinocococcosis.

He was educated at and holds qualifications from The Universities of Delhi, Calcutta, Edinburgh Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the University of Nairobi. He is a Fellow of Royal College of Physicians the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the African Academy of Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Biology, London.