In situ with Ijeoma Uchegbu

Ijeoma Uchegbu is a professor of pharmacy at University College London, UK, and will become president of Wolfson College, Cambridge in October 2024. She is also the chief scientific officer of the pharmaceutical nanotechnology spinout Nanomerics, and in 2021 was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. 

I lived in London until I was about 13 years old. And then my family moved back to Nigeria just after the end of the Nigerian Civil War. When I got to school, the big thing that hit me was that the curriculum was so different. The only subjects that were the same were the sciences. So, I found a natural home in what I found to be familiar.

Doing research in Nigeria was really hard because of the infrastructure blight. I used to drive for maybe 40 minutes to use a centrifuge. I used to drive for three hours to use an NMR.

I came to the UK to do a PhD as a mature student, as a single mum with three young children. I was having the time of my life. I loved the fact that when I needed a chemical, I could just order it. When I needed a piece of equipment, if it wasn’t in my own room, it was next door.

Doing research is quite difficult. There’s lots of setbacks. But I didn’t dwell on that frustration because I had frustrations at home. Like, how to get enough food into the house, how to get enough money to get the children’s school uniforms, how to pay the childminder, how to pay the rent. You don’t get sucked into this ‘all my experiments are not working’ kind of mode.

I hid the fact that I was a parent from my supervisor because I felt he wouldn’t take me seriously. And then one day, it popped out in conversation accidentally, because of course you’re living and breathing your kids. He was shocked. But once he knew, he couldn’t do enough for me. He was unbelievably kind. Without that I wouldn’t have got through it.

My approach is always to be kind, always to empower. Always to say ‘of course you can do it,’ and to encourage. Kindness is not really regarded as a trait that we bring to the workplace. But putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and thinking ‘How would I like to be treated in this particular situation?’ is so important.

I started doing [equality and diversity] work reluctantly. I was already a professor at UCL [University College London], and the provost asked me to come and be part of the Race Equality Charter. I just thought ‘Oh, for God’s sake, stereotypically is it because I’m black? I don’t want to do this work. I’m enjoying my science.’ I went to the first meeting because it was the provost, I couldn’t really say no. And then I saw the numbers. I was shocked. I said to the provost, ‘I would like to have a senior role in this’.

Kindness is not really regarded as a trait we bring to the workplace

The thing I’m absolutely most proud of in my entire life as an academic is that we got rid of the names of eugenicists from UCL in June 2020. Eugenicists were celebrated on our campus, they had buildings and rooms named after them. You can acknowledge that these eugenicists had a side hustle in brilliant academic work that wasn’t eugenics, and study them, but we should not immortalise them on buildings.

I think one of the things that is problematic in science, which is incredibly wasteful, is the way we seek funding. Our success rates are normally 10 to 15%. My first year as a lecturer, I wrote 13 funding applications. I got one grant. But I was writing all the time because I was desperate to get a grant.

I go running at the weekends. I sometimes go walking with my husband as well, mostly because he likes walking. It gives me a time to chat to him when he’s not doing something else.

I love watching TV too, so waste many hours at night just watching rubbish. It’s a good way to focus on other people’s fictitious problems. I like to sometimes watch Masterchef and howl at their attempts.

We’ve got a place in France, it’s quite rural. It’s a little village, there are no constant interruptions. I had to do a lot of research for the book I’m writing, and I really could focus on doing that there.

I love the work I do. I absolutely love doing research. I think being a scientific researcher is so amazing because it’s the only job where you can think about something the night before, go into work and try it out a little bit. I don’t think there’s any other job like that where you can create something without having too many people involved, that is just yours. That you can make fundamental change is so powerful.