Award-winning actor Will Smith plays forensic neuropathologist Bennet Omalu in Concussion

(Dr Bennet Omalu)

(Will Smith)

In the new film, Concussion (director: Peter Landesman), to be released on Christmas Day 2015, Will Smith will play Dr Bennet Omalu, the forensic neuropathologist who, in 2002, discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by trauma in the brain sustained in contact sport injuries. Omalu, an African American born in Biafra in 1968 during that catastrophic phase of the Igbo genocide in which 3.1 million Igbo were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, is co-founder and director of the Brain Injury Research Institute, Landing Lane, Moon Township, Pennsylvania, US., and clinical professor at the department of medical pathology and laboratory medicine, University of California, Davis.

Professor Omalu here (link below) discusses his research on CTE in an interview with Michael Kirk, Frontline, 25 March 2013:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-frontline-interview-dr-bennet-omalu/ (accessed 2 September 2015)

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