Oluwatoyin Asojo

“Nothing beats long walks in nature. After the first 2 mi, I have found solutions or new insights to nagging problems.”

“Avoid saying yes or no right away. Instead, say, “I’ll think about it,” and do so. It avoids impulsive decisions and shows that you respect yourself and the other person.”

“Uh-huh. I’m one of those people who believe that my role in academia is to nurture that belief students have. Who am I to say that the student standing in front of me is not the one that is going to cure cancer? My purpose is to be a catalyst for them to achieve that vision.”

“By far, academia! One word: students. I think hanging around with people that still have that passion for learning keeps me excited to learn new things. I believe I’m not going to stop learning until I’m brain dead, so I like being around people that have that zest for life and that passion for science and that optimism. They’re not jaded.”

“One of the constants in my research is I don’t like doing projects that everybody is interested in. So I focused my research on neglected tropical diseases. Traveling, moving, and mixing with people have actually reinforced that idea, because there are all these diseases that affect so many people that don’t get the level of focus because nobody wants to study them, or there’s not enough funding.”

“Oh, it’s everything. I think the ability to see connections where people don’t normally see connections is so important. When you’re able to think about problems from a bird’s-eye view rather than being stuck on the small, incremental aspects of it, you come up with solutions that people may think are crazy, but they end up being the best approaches. Of course you also fail a lot more, because you pursue crazy ideas. But in the process of failing, you find new directions that enhance your research.”

“I’ve done work on glioblastoma. When I was in industry, I worked primarily on HIV. Right now I’m working on vaccines and drugs for neglected pathogens, working on different diseases like leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis. Occasionally I collaborate with people in industry to work on cancer. I also have some collaborations for infectious diseases like malaria.”

“Doing research at an HBCU is amazing because the students are hungry. They come with excellence in so many different areas that inform their science. Having the opportunity to nurture the intellectual growth of this pool of students is a privilege.”

“I’ll put it this way: my dad didn’t realize he was mentoring me; he thought I was just coming to hang around in the lab. I remember when I was in elementary school, after school, I would just wander over to his lab. And before long, when I was in middle school, I was coming over and helping with experiments. It was just fun, and it was a way to hang out with my dad.”

“It chose me. I really wanted to make drugs. So when I started grad school, my goal was to be an organic chemist and synthesize chemicals in the lab. Then my mentor allowed me to play with every project in the lab, and I chose to drop all the synthesis projects and work on the structural ones. My intent was never to become a crystallographer; it just happened.”

“Broadly, my objective is to make therapeutics. I use structural biology, biophysics, and computation to study protein interactions with each other or with small molecules to design improved therapeutics.”

“I believe I’m not going to stop learning until I’m brain dead.”