Ijeoma Uchegbu stepped off a plane to London from Nigeria with her three daughters, one of whom is still a baby, carrying only one suitcase and very little money.
She returned to the city where she was born 30 years ago to start a new life.
Within weeks, she found herself in a homeless shelter, struggling to feed and protect her family.
Today she is a world-famous and recognized scientist.
Her incredible journey was marked by courage and resilience, and with several unexpected twists and turns.
Early life
When Ijeoma's parents arrived in the United Kingdom from Nigeria in 1960, her mother was pregnant.
When she was born, they gave her a name that symbolizes hope.
"Ijeoma means 'good journey,' and they gave me that name in the hope that everything would go well for them in the new country," Ijeoma recalls.
Her parents were university students, and so their daughter was left with a foster family in Kent, a county in the southeast of England, as a baby.
This was a common practice among West African students who had children.
Ijeoma spent four happy years with this family, which she believed was hers, until one day her biological father came to get her.
"I had no idea what was happening. I just remember my foster mother just disappeared, and my father was there," she recounts.
Her father had already divorced Idžeoma's mother at that point.
Idjeoma was 10 years old when she found out that her stepmother was not her biological mother.
An unanswered question
Ijeoma eventually met her biological mother when she was 13 years old.
"She was very, very happy to meet me and very nervous."
"She was shaking when we hugged. She was a stranger to me, but we had a wonderful weekend," he recalls.
At that point, Ijeoma was one of six children, so the time she spent with her mother, who lived with her younger sister, was a complete change of pace for her.
"I was alone with two adults and had their full attention. We went shopping and I ended up with a suitcase full of gifts."
"I just had to look at something and she'd ask me, 'Do you want that?'"
What they didn't talk about was why her mother was so absent from Ijeoma's life.
"I felt that if I asked that question, the answer would be difficult for her, and maybe for me too."
"That's why I didn't ask. I was just enjoying the moment."
A year after meeting, her mother moved to the United States of America (USA), where she died shortly after turning 33.
"I screamed in pain."
“It never occurred to me that I would never see her again,” recalls Professor Ijeoma.
She lost her guardian, stepmother, and biological mother, but she still had her father.
"He was a truly amazing person. He had many children by the end of his life, 11 in total, but he was always caring for me."
"He never forgot my birthday, he often played with us, read us stories and took us to the zoo," she says.
He also recalls how he had always dreamed of returning to Nigeria, but felt he could not because of the civil war with Biafra.
"I'll be back next year. We'll be back," he recalls his lines, which he often repeated.
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Moving to Nigeria
Ijeoma grew up in Britain at a time when racism was at its peak.
She had a great teacher who often told her, "You can do anything you want," but she found that really difficult.
"I didn't see myself as a professional, because I didn't see anyone like me in those professions," she says.
But that changed dramatically when her father finally took the family back to Nigeria.
“I was leaving all my friends to go to a faraway place I didn’t know,” says Ijeoma.
"I acted bravely, but I remember walking into the school principal's office to tell her I was leaving and bursting into tears."
"I was inconsolable, and to cheer me up, she told me: 'You'll have a sunny Christmas!', I cried even more."
It turns out that even the sun will not be merciful to her.
Shortly after arriving in Nigeria, she suffered severe heatstroke and was bedridden for months.
Doctors discovered that she was allergic to bright sunlight.
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Change of perspective
When she was finally able to start school, things didn't improve much.
"It was very difficult to be accepted. I looked like I had severe burns, I spoke strangely and I had not experienced war."
"People said I only came back because things got better," she explains.
But there was still a "desolation" around it, exacerbated by chronically unpredictable electricity and water supplies.
In the UK, she was among the best students at school, but she was popular.
In Nigeria, she had to get used to unfamiliar school subjects.
"Science and math were the only things that were the same, so I sought salvation in them because I understood them."
This was a fortunate circumstance for her future career and, looking back today, she is aware that it awakened in her the desire to attend college.
"It's the best thing that ever happened to me," she says.
Finding love
At the age of 16, Idžeoma enrolled in pharmacy studies.
She later earned a master's degree, married, and had three daughters, but her marriage eventually fell apart.
That was one of the reasons she returned to the UK.
The second was the expectation that they would have better opportunities there.
“I wanted to become a scientist, and with Nigerian infrastructure it was difficult,” she explains.
But few believed in her.
"They laughed at me, saying I wouldn't have enough money and that poverty would force me to go back."
She arrived in London with very little money and her three daughters, and soon found herself in a homeless shelter.
Everything was extremely unreliable.
"At one point, 11 families were sharing one bedroom, and the kitchen was sometimes closed and we couldn't cook. The staff treated us with complete contempt."
"I stayed there for seven months and when I left, I felt like I had been released from prison," she describes the feeling.
Despite the hardships, she says she never once considered returning to Nigeria.
She soon began looking for doctoral positions in nanotechnology, the study of tiny particles.
The scholarship wasn't very large, but she received government support to be able to pay the rent.
Three years later, she attended a conference that changed her life "again in unimaginable ways."
There she met Professor Andreas Schatzlein, a German scientist, and after just four days, as she says, she "fell madly in love."
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The importance of a tiny particle
Eventually he moved to Great Britain.
"He left everything to be with me," she says.
Professor Shatzelin not only became her husband, but also her professional partner.
Imagine a nanoparticle so small, something less than a thousandth the thickness of a human hair, and so precise that it can deliver a drug exactly where it needs to be in the body, enhancing efficacy and reducing side effects.
The two of them achieved exactly that.
"When you take a drug, whether orally (as a pill) or via injection, it eventually reaches the bloodstream, and from there to all organs, but sometimes that's not desirable, because not all organs need to be under the effect of the drug."
"The solution lies in nanoparticle-based drugs," explains Professor Ijeoma.
"If these nanoparticles only target the affected areas and not healthy tissues, the risk of side effects is reduced," he adds.
These side effects can range from the catastrophic consequences of chemotherapy to addiction caused by medications prescribed for severe pain, such as morphine or fentanyl.
The two are currently working on developing nanoparticles to deliver drugs to hard-to-reach parts of the body, such as the back of the eye and the brain.
While clinical trials are underway, they hope to cure blindness with eye drops, transform painkillers, and help solve the opioid crisis.
Finding time to laugh
Ijeoma now works at both University College London (UCL) and the University of Cambridge, in the UK.
But her passion for science also led her to explore humor as a way to convey her message.
"I've noticed that my jokes get better reactions from students."
"So I decided to get better and enrolled in a 10-week comedy course."
This involved a stand-up performance in a London theater.
"It was scary, but I ended up having a fantastic time," she adds with satisfaction.
This feeling seems to follow the trajectory of her extraordinary life so far.
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