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.… - Oluwatoyin A. Asojo

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.

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.

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