Name:
Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu
Organisation:
University College London
Year elected:
2024
Primary professional setting:
Academia
Ijeoma Uchegbu FMedSci is President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UCL’s Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a governor on the Wellcome board (one of the largest biomedical sciences research charities in the world), a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences Council and Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics Ltd. Uchegbu has served as Chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Scientific Secretary of the Controlled Release Society and she is the immediate past UCL Provost’s Envoy for Race Equality, a role in which she led on race equality work at UCL. Her work led to the removal of the names of prominent eugenicists from all of UCL’s buildings in 2020. Uchegbu has also presented to the UK House of Commons on the educational racial disparities that lead to a lack of ethnic minority representation in scientific research. Uchegbu is an inventor and she has out licensed medicines developed in her laboratory to Virpax Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRPX). Her company, Nanomerics Ltd. is also developing medicines that address sight threatening illnesses. Technologies developed in Uchegbu’s laboratory have won prizes from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Nanomerics Ltd. won the King’s Award for Enterprise 2024 in the Innovation category. The King’s Award for Enterprise is the most UK’s most prestigious business award. Uchegbu’s popular science book– Chain Reaction – will be published by Hodder and Stoughton.Uchegbu is listed in Bloomsbury Publishing’s Who’s Who 2024.