Robert Mokaya: ‘I have been lucky to open a lot of doors’
The innovative materials chemist on a love of making things and opening doors for others
I was always curious, as far back as I can remember. I always wanted to find out why things happened the way they did, and I had lots of questions. Many of them remained unanswered!
My nickname when I was little was Doctor. When you do well in maths, physics and chemistry, sometimes people assume ‘Oh, he’s going to be a doctor’. They didn’t know that I was going to be a doctor, just not a medical doctor.
I spent a year working for Unilever. And I’m glad I did, because it absolutely showed me that I didn’t want to work in that environment. So I spent that year trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to get back to academia and research.