Nigerian child hawker became first black person with PhD in Biomedical Engineering

Life dealt Adeola Deborah Olubamiji a hard blow. Her family’s low estate made things tougher. The daughter of a pepper seller, Adeola watched her mother rise as early as 3am every day for “Shasha Market” in Ibadan, capital of Oyo State, to conduct her pepper buying business. Her father, though from a well-educated family with PhD holders, didn’t get to attend a tertiary institution.

To support the family, she had to hawk pepper on the streets of Ibadan. Born to the family of Mr. & Mrs. Isaac & Juliana Olubamiji, she attended Alafia Public Primary School and St. Gabriel’s Secondary Commercial School in Mokola, Ibadan, Nigeria. Against all odds, she became the senior prefect girl while in secondary school.

She obtained a Bachelor of Science in Physics (with Electronics) from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria in 2008 and a Masters of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland in 2011. In June 2017, Adeola received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada and made history as the first black person to have received this PhD from the university. Dr. Adeola is the Lead Metallurgist / Material Engineer at Burloak Technologies (The Advanced Additive Manufacturing Division of Samuel Sons & Co) in Ontario, Canada.

In July 2017, she was celebrated as one of the top five of 150 black women making Canada better for contributions in Science and Technology by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She was also recently presented a prestigious award as the Woman of Outstanding Achievement in Education by the Nigerian-Canadian Community in a ceremony in Toronto, Canada. The “ardent” STEM advocate has continued to serve as a positive role model to the inner-city black youths in her Canadian community and around the world.

From her savings, Dr. Adeola organises regular STEM events and industrial tours for black youths in Ontario’s black communities to help youths discover what engineers do, and to expose them to STEM career opportunities available to them.

On how she overcame her humble beginnings, she said: ‘’Looking at my parent’s life, they both worked hard to care for us but we didn’t have any form of luxury. So, I learned quickly as a child that “to earn more, you must learn more.” In addition, the daily reminder was on the wall of our living room and it was clear that I needed to be “EDUCATED” to make valuable contribution to a knowledge-based society, to earn respect and to earn more money than my parents. As such, I promised myself to strive to know more critical facts, gather more information than the average person and be the best and nothing but the best. ‘’As a Scientist, I am challenged and inspired by the possibilities and potentials of technology, and the fulfillment I get from solving difficult problems.

''As an engineer, I am inspired by industry 4.0 (e.g. 3D-printing) and its design and manufacturing capabilities. As a Nigerian, the complicated problems that I faced or my people in Nigeria face inspire me. On a daily basis, I go to work knowing that I am paying the price to acquire the knowledge and the skill-sets required to help bring back innovative manufacturing solutions to fix, improve, and tweak Nigeria’s mostly dead metal and plastic manufacturing industries.

‘’My PhD was not plain sailing; there were setbacks, frustrating moments, doubts, failed relationship and several failed experiments. The isolation that comes with embedding myself in research and making it my boyfriend, family and best friend was a challenge. There were moments when I slept at the University for several days in order to collect data and only went home to shower. But the most challenging aspect of the PhD by far was the job search that comes at the end of the PhD.

''The thinking of giving up is inevitable for every PhD student. Half way through my PhD, I felt like I could do something else with my life. I felt like the PhD was standing in the way of me starting my life, buying a house, finding love and getting married. I felt like it was a shear waste of time and energy and that an MSc was already more than enough.’’