Abigael Bamgboye is a fourth-year student, studying MEng Materials Science and Engineering.  

What does International Women's Day mean to you? 

To me, it’s a valuable time to reflect on women’s achievements and how far women’s rights have come. But it’s also a poignant time to have a concrete dialogue about how we can take action to reach gender parity – sooner than the 108 years estimated by the World Economic Forum at the end of 2018.

Each year, I’m excited to hear the stories of unsung female and minority ethnic pioneers – it’s a shame these stories aren’t the norm, but it is fantastic to see that these stories are increasingly being shared at other times of the year and that modern examples of are becoming so much more frequent!

 Do you have any advice to women considering a STEM Undergraduate degree?

If you’re interested in STEM, you should definitely pursue this route! Studying STEM is an invaluable pathway to impacting the world, and along the way, you’ll have so much fun.

Plus – we need you! It’s been shown time and time again that groups of diverse thinkers produce some of the best-scoped solutions. We really can’t do that if only 35% of STEM undergraduates and 19% of engineering students are female.

Who is your biggest influence?

My biggest influence is my mother. Her resilience, grace, intelligence and prudence are amazing to me. She’s overcome incredible challenges through the grace of God.

Other individuals whom I’m inspired by include Michelle Obama – she’s an excellent example of using your platform to influence the world for the better; Cheryl Sandberg – her Ted Talk urging women to ‘sit at the table’ often resonates through my head, and Adaobi  Adibe and Kike Oniwinde – they’re phenomenal women making waves in internationally in tech. They’re also both London born and bred, and they demonstrate that you can achieve anything if you have a mindset of excellence.

Can you tell us more about the aims of the Materials, Minerals and Mining's Women in Materials Committee and how you became involved? 

I’m a member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals (IOM3) and Mining’s Women in Materials (WIM) committee. The committee’s role is to aim to bring together the female members of the institute and support them in their careers.

Some of the awesome things which the committee has done in the past include:

• spring and autumn seminars, where you can hear professionals in Materials Science speak about how they obtained their role in academia or industry, network and learn about a variety of resources which could be useful in your career journey
• International Women in Engineering Day events; these events focus on public outreach and are a fun and educational day out for families, each year with a different theme and location across the country

I became involved with them after inviting the IOM3 to Imperial’s first Materials Careers Fair, which I organised while I was Vice President of Imperial’s Materials Science Society (MatSoc). I had previously been an attendee at IOM3 events, including International Women in Engineering Day 2018, and after talking with the representative at the Careers Fair, I accepted their invitation to attend their next meeting, mostly out of curiosity. By the end of that meeting, I found myself invited to the committee and decided to accept. My morals of this story: a) get involved with things you’re passionate about, b) talk to people and always be open to learning.