Catherine Ngila: ‘I am very passionate about empowering my students’

My journey in academia started at a very early age. I had a mathematics teacher in primary school who really grilled us to make sure we did well in maths. That gave me a strong background for science, so in high school I picked physical sciences and then in university I took chemistry and mathematics.

When I was doing my master’s degree, I took a project to investigate the leaching of aluminium from cookware. But it went further to look at aluminium in water supplies in Kenya, that was in the 1980s. I continued with aluminium for my doctorate, and then the water system – issues about water monitoring, and methods of filtration and removal of pollutants – became part and parcel of my interest in research.