Carmen Drahl: Protein whisperer Oluwatoyin Asojo fights neglected diseases: She’s also creating opportunities for scientists from historically underrepresented groups

"When Oluwatoyin Asojo was about 9 years old, she started volunteering regularly at an orphanage near where she lived in Nigeria. She remembers seeing kids infected with parasitic worms, or with faces disfigured from leprosy.

'It was eye-opening,' Asojo says. She was raised on campus at one of Africa’s finest universities and Nigeria’s oldest — the University of Ibadan. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father ran teaching labs and his own anatomy and histology lab, where Asojo helped out as a kid. A published poet in high school, she hobnobbed with famous bards at the Ibadan poetry club. 'You just realize just how blessed you are, living in this little cocoon,' she says."

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hookworm-disease-protein-vaccine-oluwatoyin-asojo