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My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchebu.
She trained as a pharmacist and has spent her career harnessing the potential of nanoparticles to take medicines to hard-to-reach areas of the body,
increasing efficacy and reducing side effects.
She's currently working on a drug that can reach the back of the eye without the need for painful injections.
She's also developed medicines for neurological conditions that can cross the blood-brain barrier.
painkillers that could help ease the opioid crisis,
and she's finding new ways to target cancer.
She was born in London to Nigerian parents.
Growing up in both countries led her to fall in love with what she calls the universal language of science.
She passed the entry exam to study pharmacy at university when she was just 16,
but faced challenges
as she followed her academic path.
She completed her PhD
while she was in sole charge of three young children and struggling to make ends meet.
In 2010 she co-founded a pharmaceutical company to work on real-world applications of her research which won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Emerging Technologies prize.
Last year she was appointed president of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge.
She says,
I would tell my younger self to work on what you're interested in and ignore all barriers
as they are there for a reason.