Kenya

Born in Nairobi, Kenya • Studied Mathematics at the University of Leeds • Highest Degree PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leeds • Lives in the UK • Occupation Professor of Mathematical Medicine and Biology at the University of Nottingham

When I think back to school days, my sense is that I’ve always enjoyed mathematics. But there is one particular memory that is contrary to that. I was around 10 years old and had been finding most of the “maths” we did quite easy. Then some combination of factors (teacher, specific content) brought a sudden loss of confidence. I could not get my head around what we were being taught and I thought that was it – that I did not like maths anymore. My dad decided I was being silly (thankfully) and worked through some examples with me, every night, for about a week. By the end of it, my temporary lack of confidence had gone and ever since then I have really enjoyed some form of maths (here one can read – NOT pure maths). In fact, whenever I couldn’t make a decision about what I wanted to do next (at the end of A-levels, at the end of my undergraduate degree) I just picked the thing I enjoyed the most (maths and then applied maths) and went with it. I come from a South Asian culture where, if you’re considered “able”, you’re expected to study Medicine. That wasn’t for me – I really did not like remembering lots of facts and much preferred the problem-solving needed for studying maths.

(…) I have started to look into the mechanisms that could lead to a rare lung disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and Long Covid.

In an interesting twist though, in my research career, I have essentially specialised in applying mathematics to biological and medical problems! My PhD was all about understanding what happens to blood flow in collapsible blood vessels like the giraffe jugular vein. In my postdoc I was investigating how to optimise ventilator settings for patients in ICU and then how to deliver inhaled therapies into the lungs. Since then, my focus has been in trying to understand how diseases like Asthma and other respiratory diseases originate and then progress. This involves incorporating biology and physics into mathematical and computational models, using approaches from different areas of applied maths. More recently I have started to look into the mechanisms that could lead to a rare lung disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and Long Covid.

Although I am now a Professor and have spent much of my working life in academia, I took a somewhat torturous path getting there and could have picked a different route a number of times. Immediately after my PhD I worked for a credit card company, applying statistical models in a somewhat robotic fashion. There was no problem-solving involved and within 3 months I knew I could not stay and 3 months later started a postdoc in Sheffield. Towards the end of my postdoc I had my first daughter and worked part-time to complete it after which I decided I would just take time out to look after her. Two years later I had my second daughter.

Throughout my career, I have had some fantastic mentors (both women and men) who guided me through some tough times. These included workplace bullying and discrimination (as a woman of colour) and I have had to work hard to overcome these hurdles.

When my second daughter was around 2 years old I was starting to consider alternative careers to academia (I felt I had been out of it too long, hadn’t written up my postdoc work into peer-reviewed papers, etc) when I got a phone call from a previous academic colleague from the University of Nottingham asking if I would be interested in covering his teaching part-time, as he was taking a sabbatical. I took up this offer and continued to teach and work part-time until I felt my daughters were old enough for me to consider getting back into research. I applied for and was awarded a fantastic “return-to-research” Daphne Jackson Fellowship which allowed me to restart my research on a part-time basis and also write up some of my postdoc work. I will be eternally grateful for this opportunity, as it allowed me to start my research in asthma, build up a network of collaborators and eventually my first MRC grant. The other most important thing that made all this possible is my amazing, hugely supportive, parents who helped look after my daughters for many years.

Throughout my career, I have had some fantastic mentors (both women and men) who guided me through some tough times. These included workplace bullying and discrimination (as a woman of colour) and I have had to work hard to overcome these hurdles. Unfortunately, these things still exist. More recently (in my case) these have been more in the form of unconscious bias rather than overt. And significant efforts are being made to address these issues in my School. I try to contribute the best I can with these efforts. Nonetheless, it does mean that I regularly have to sit back and ask if it’s worth it. The answer isn’t an easy “yes”, not just for the above reasons but also because of the way higher education is going these days in terms of massive budget cuts and increased bureaucracy. On the positive side, I work with wonderful friends and colleagues, on worthwhile research problems, and great students.