l'Oreal - Jess & Ijeoma

Scientific discovery is fuelled by the imaginations of creative minds

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As a teenager in Nigeria, scientist Ijeoma Uchegbu yearned to become a novelist — she once missed a short story competition deadline because she just couldn’t stop writing. “I wanted to write books and that’s where I thought I would end up.” Her 13-year-old self would be amazed that she’s now professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience at UCL (University College London), and an entrepreneur with a string of scientific awards to her name. While a book is still on the horizon, she’s channelled her creativity into scientific discovery. She began by sketching the molecule she wanted to create in the lab — since then she’s helped build a novel means of distributing drugs within the human body, at the right time and place and in the right dose, and she holds several patents for drug delivery. “You have to be creative — you start with a blank page and imagine the future you want to create.”

Fellow scientist and physicist Dr Jess Wade agrees. She has always rejected what she considers a false distinction between arts and ‘sciencey’ types. Although she was destined to study physics, she considers herself creative. Dr Wade studied art for a year, marvelling at the breadth of scope of Renaissance art and the influence of science. “Today there’s a very prescriptive view of arts and sciences and it’s unfair for young people. They might think science and engineering leave no room for creativity.” She works hard to convince them otherwise, and enthuses to her colleagues about the arts. “When people look at art, it brings something in them alive.” Dr Wade was a winner of the Physical Science category at the 2021 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards — set up to help empower more women scientists to achieve scientific excellence and participate equally in solving the challenges facing humanity. She works as a research fellow at Imperial College London’s Department of Materials, developing new materials for optical and electronic devices. “It’s applied physics — we are particularly interested in identifying new materials for more sustainable quantum technologies — making the kind of discoveries that I think will benefit society.” Designing molecules requires vision and process, she says. “You don’t make a million of them and then see which ones work — you have to consider carefully, then get a chemist to synthesise it, before discovering how you could turn it into something you could put into a device.”

She still thinks creatively more than ever — visualising the molecules she works with and how they transport electricity or interact with light. They’re too small to see through a microscope. “We need to be more imaginative in how we communicate the significance of materials and chemistry in everyday technology in order to inspire people.”

Say no to pigeonholes

The power of imagination

Could shining a light on the central role of creativity and collaboration in science be key to addressing the gender imbalance in STEM? We spoke to three scientists who believe misconceptions about a career in STEM could be holding girls back

Science requires imagination, agrees Shakila Bik, a chemistry graduate and director of scientific and regulatory affairs for L’Oréal UK & Ireland. “You couldn’t separate scientific and creative thinking — they are intrinsically linked and valued,” she says. While L’Oréal Groupe is a company rooted in science — founded 110 years ago by a chemist — experts there couldn’t create new products and breakthroughs without some original thinking, Ms Bik believes, and that requires a range of different people and views. “Science is at our roots, it’s our heritage as an organisation. But we need to bring alternative views to challenge each other, open our eyes to new possibilities and find creative, ingenious solutions.” L’Oréal Groupe operates scientific labs around the world, where experts develop new products that leverage scientific advances and deeper understanding of hair and skin science. And Ms Bik points to the support L’Oréal Groupe gives to widen the field to redress the gender imbalance in science with its longstanding partnership with UNESCO to run the For Women In Science awards, which target female scientists at an early stage in their academic careers.

The importance of imagination and creativity in science Quotes from some of the world’s greatest scientists

I am among those who think that science has great beauty”

Professor Uchegbu understands the value of support in the early years. Science wasn’t on her agenda as a teen — it was an uncle who urged her to go to university aged 16, where she rapidly learned to manage money and homesickness. She studied pharmacy and went on to complete a master’s at the University of Lagos, eventually travelling back to her native UK, where she’d lived until her early teens and where research opportunities were more abundant. With just £500 in her pocket and three young children to care for, she spent the first few months of her PhD at the University of London School of Pharmacy hiding the fact she was a single mother, in case she was judged as unsuitable. “But in fact, when he found out, my supervisor couldn’t have been more supportive.” By 2002 she’d become a professor. While she’s modest about her achievements, she’s been celebrated with numerous awards and honours, not least by the UK government in the Women of Outstanding Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology awards. She has edited books, holds a string of patents and as a woman of colour is the first to sit on the Wellcome Board of Governors, the first female black professor in pharmacy, and the first to be principal investigator as a recipient of physical sciences research council grant funding. And she wouldn’t be where she is today without the wisdom of colleagues, she says.

Alongside her work in nanoparticles, she has co-founded a spin-out company, Nanometrics, which has a nanotechnology platform for developing drugs to treat brain diseases such as chronic pain and epilepsy. “It’s otherwise challenging to get drugs into the brain, and the nanotechnology solves this problem,” she says. New molecules designed and created in Professor Uchegbu’s lab must be tested, and she has worked with fellow experts to discover how these compounds behave in real life beyond the lab. “We needed other insights for key experiments to see if we had a viable pain therapeutic.” All her work to date has been collaborative. “For our technologies to travel you need collaboration — it’s just impossible without it. If you want your technology to be robust, you need the understanding of different specialists.” While Professor Uchegbu, a valued member of the jury for the 2023 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards, works in her spin-out company, she also works in academia at UCL where she’s collaborating with physicists — it’s taken a couple of years to learn their language — on a project to try to diagnose malignant growths before they become life threatening. “The great thing about collaboration is that if you’re having problems, you have people to talk to that you can trust and who’ll understand; it’s not a lonely place. And when things go well it’s fabulous.”

Against the odds

If young people knew the extent of collaboration required within science they might not be so put off, Dr Wade believes. “The idea of the lone genius working in a dusty room is out of date and probably never existed,” she says. Huge discoveries and breakthroughs are made by large international teams with a variety of disciplines and diverse backgrounds. “You come to realisations faster if you have all those voices in the room.” She counts herself lucky. Her science teachers at school were inspirational, and her parents influential — her mother’s a psychiatrist, her father a neurologist. “And so I’ve always wanted to do a job where I helped society.” But for the many young people who lack mentors and role models, there’s a dire need for better science communication, particularly within her field of new material technology. “We have a responsibility to communicate our findings with the people — the public — who are paying for it, and also to inspire a new generation of people from different backgrounds.” Outreach work could be more effective, she believes, and the odd lunchtime talk from a scientist doesn’t cut it. Numbers of girls studying physics remain low. “Gender stereotyping doesn’t help — the idea that arts are for girls and the tougher subjects for boys.”

Inspired by science

A L’Oréal Young Scientist Centre workshop gives students the chance to become a scientist for the day. They are given the freedom to test their ideas by designing creative experiments, in much the same way as professional research scientists do. With access to advanced technology and experiments outside of the normal school curriculum, the experience can ignite a passion for scientific discovery and encourage curiosity-driven learning. Here, three girls who attended a workshop share their science thoughts while at the Ri for the day

Science is the way we understand our world, which means we can solve problems like climate change. I’m thinking of a science-based career, possibly as a researcher or a neuroscientist. My favourite science is biology, because I think we should learn more about life and what makes us who we are, before we can live the best life that we have. Science is my favourite subject – I think it’s really important to learn about the world around you, and how things work… We have science all around us – most of us probably wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t have science, medicine and technology. If you learn about the things around you then you appreciate them. I definitely want to go to college and university and study science.

It’s good to do experiments in person to solidify what you’ve already learned. I like all the sciences, but I really like biology, because dissections are really fun.

Dr Wade made a stir back in 2017 when she began editing the pages of Wikipedia to highlight the achievements of unsung women scientists, and her work was picked up by mainstream media. What began as a hobby has translated into an ambitious unpaid job — to right the wrongs of systemic bias in a field which has historically been dominated by white men. She does this in her spare time, mining the internet to discover likely women scientists for mention. And in five years, she has yet to run out of new women candidates to champion. “I find it incredibly relaxing. Rather than complaining, I’d like to do something.” And in terms of communicating directly with the public, it’s a hard medium to beat — the English online encyclopedia has more than 12 billion hits a month, with users ranging from school children through to professionals, politicians and academics. “It’s not like writing an essay that sits in a folder and no one ever looks at it again,” she says. “It’s the most cost-effective way to get information very quickly to a hugely diverse group of people.” On the conference circuit, Dr Wade has campaigned for more women speakers, and she has begun to push for under-celebrated women to be nominated for awards — which in turn gives them more credibility.

Addressing the gender imbalance

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By Helena Pozniak

Amber Mciver, year 10

Fiona Li, year 10

Eve Spearman-Walters, year 9

Scientist Ijeoma Uchegbu is professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience at UCL

Scientist and physicist Dr Jess Wade rejects the distinction between arts and ‘sciencey’ types

Shakila Bik believes original thinking is the key to L’Oréal’s success

Dr Wade collaborates with large international teams from diverse backgrounds

Target audience: a L’Oréal Young Scientist Centre attendee

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~ Polish born physicist and chemist Marie Curie

All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things”

~ Polish-US chemist Stephanie Kwolek

Observation is not enough, and it seems to me that in science, as in the arts, there is very little worth having that does not require the exercise of intuition as well as of intelligence, the use of imagination as well as of information”

~ British crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale

Molecules designed and created in Professor Uchegbu’s lab must be thoroughly tested

Collaboration and communication

Women scientist pioneers who changed the world

UK Engineer, motorcycle and sports car racer Beatrice Shilling designed a solution to a problem in RAF fighter planes that was endangering lives of Second World War pilots. Her team created a restrictor — a brass thimble with a hole in the middle — to fit into the engine’s carburettor to help prevent engines from stalling. She was awarded an OBE in 1949.

US scientist Barbara McClintock spent her entire career analysing maize and developed a technique in the 1930s to identify and examine its individual chromosomes. This allowed her to identify ‘jumping genes’ – sequences of DNA that move between the genome. While the significance of her work wasn’t immediately recognised, she was awarded a Nobel Prize (physiology or medicine) in 1983. By then the importance of her discoveries – she developed theories that genes turn on and off physical characteristics – became clearer.

US 20th-century mathematician and computer scientist Grace Hopper is famous for coining the term “debugging” while at Harvard when a programming team discovered it was a moth that was hindering progress. This was during a pioneering project which began in the 1940s to programme one of the earliest electromechanical computers. She developed an early high-level computer language (COBOL) based on the English language rather than binary code.

Scientists once thought the earth’s core was entirely liquid. It was 20th-century Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann who used data from wave patterns created by a 1929 earthquake to show conclusively that the earth’s inner core was in fact solid within a molten outer core.

The L’Oréal Young Scientist Centre at London’s Royal Institution is inspiring young people to consider a career in science

Attendees conduct an experiment at the L’Oréal Young Scientist Centre

Progress requires diversity of thought, says Ms Bik, and a need recognised by L’Oréal Groupe when creating the L’Oréal Young Scientist Centre — a lab to inspire young people through scientific demonstrations and hands-on experiments — at London’s Royal Institution in 2009. “We all have blind spots. Complexity needs collective thinking,” Ms Bik explains. “You benefit from different perspectives to identify the best way to answer a challenge.” As a schoolgirl, she didn’t even know her role existed. “I had no idea what options were available to me. If we can help people — young women and girls in particular — discover what’s available, we can inspire the next generation.”

Science is a surprising career, says Professor Uchegbu. Rejections — of a paper, of funding applications — can be frustrating. “But there is euphoria, too, when things go well. And you are never, ever bored — there’s always a problem to solve.” With subjects such as maths and physics, few career doors will ever close, says Dr Wade, but there’s a more exciting reason for studying science than simply future-proofing a career. Some of the biggest breakthroughs could be on the horizon — technologies to tackle climate change, new medicines and new advances in quantum technology. Any creative or regulatory work with artificial intelligence will require an understanding of ethics, of history or philosophy, she says. “You’ll be able to go off and have a career in any of these transforming areas that will benefit society. For me it’s really exciting to create and play with materials that can do things that no one ever thought possible. It’s extraordinarily creative and eye opening. You see so many different parts of the world and ways of thinking. It’s just a really exciting space to be in.”

Developing diversity

Professor Uchegbu is the first woman of colour to sit on the Wellcome Board of Governors

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