Dr. Owolabi, P.E., joined the Morgan State University (MSU) faculty in the summer of 2010. He is the Director of the Sustainable Infrastructure Development, Smart Innovation and Resilient Engineering Research Laboratory as well as the Director of the Undergraduate Geotechnical Laboratory at the department of Civil Engineering. In 2020, he was the interim Associate Chair of the department of Civil Engineering. He has about 30 years of outstanding experience in practicing, teaching, and research in civil and transportation engineering. Dr. Owolabi earned his doctorate in civil and environmental engineering in 2007, from George Washington University as well as Masters in civil engineering (transportation engineering) from the prestigious Federal University of Technology, Akure Nigeria. He completed his Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from the premier Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria in 1991. In 2019 under his leadership as the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) Accreditation Coordinator, he successfully led the department to attain another six-year accreditation cycle without any observation, concern, shortcoming, or deficiency being the first of such in the history of the department.

Dr. Owolabi is also the recipient of the 2020 Morgan State University Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Service. He is an expert in advanced modeling and computational mechanics. His major area of research interests centers majorly in, geotechnical engineering, engineering education, sustainable infrastructure development, computational geomechanics, pavement engineering, Soil mechanics, physical and numerical modeling of soil structures, constitutive modeling, pavement design, characterization and prediction of behavior of pavement materials, linear and non-linear finite element applications in geotechnical engineering, geo-structural systems analysis, structural mechanics and material model development. He is considered to be a paradigm of a modern engineer, possessing a combination of practical experience with the most advanced numerical analysis tools, and knowledge of material constitutive relations - things essential to addressing the challenges of advanced material research and development.

Dr. Owolabi has secured, as PI or Co-PI, about $2.46 million in research grants that solved society problems in transportation engineering, fostered sustainable infrastructure development and enhanced student engagement in the STEM fields. Dr. Owolabi currently is the Principal Investigator of a three-year $1.5 Million NSF grant that cuts across multiple STEM disciplines at Morgan titled "Adapting an Experiment-centric Teaching Approach to Increase Student Achievement in Multiple STEM Disciplines". Dr. Owolabi has authored over 40 publications/presentations in civil engineering and STEM education. He is a professional engineer registered in Maryland. Dr. Owolabi maintains membership in the Committee on Geo-Environmental and Climatic Impacts on Geomaterials (AKG300) of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), where he plays a vital role in facilitating the exchange of transportation research information and results, through; development of research problem statements in transportation; review and recommendation of papers for publication and for TRB Annual meetings.