Women in Research #LINO75: Naomi Chounbayor Kabiri

Naomi from Ghana is a Principal Laboratory Technician and MPhil Postgraduate Student in Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.

Her research interests span environmental chemistry, analytical chemistry, electrochemistry, and sustainable materials research. Her current work focuses on heavy metal contamination, ecological risk assessment, and human health implications of polluted soils from abandoned waste disposal and informal e-waste recycling sites in tropical urban environments. Naomi is also interested in developing analytical and electrochemical approaches for environmental monitoring, pollution remediation, and sustainable technologies for energy and environmental applications.

Naomi participates in the 75^th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (#LINO75 – Interdisciplinary).

Enjoy the interview with Naomi and get inspired:

What inspired you to pursue a career in science / in your discipline?

My journey into science began with a deliberate act of defiance, quiet but meaningful. After junior high school, I was placed by WAEC into a business programme at senior high school. I did not accept it. I changed schools so I could study science instead. In my community, most students choose arts or business. I wanted something different, and I was willing to move to get it. During senior high school, chemistry became the subject that held my attention most. My chemistry teacher, Mr. Jonathan Oworae, had a gift for making the discipline feel alive and purposeful. He would talk to us not just about reactions and equations, but about what chemists actually do in the world, the problems they solve, the lives they protect, the environments they help restore. Those conversations changed something in me. Science stopped being a subject and became a direction.

Growing up in Ghana, I was surrounded by environmental realities that I could not ignore. Poor waste management. Contaminated water. Degraded land. I did not have the vocabulary for it then, but I was already asking the question that still drives my research today: what can science do about this?

My path into chemistry was not linear. It moved through a Higher National Diploma, national service, years of laboratory work, a BSc, and eventually a master’s degree pursued alongside a full-time technical role. But every stage deepened the same conviction. The contamination data we generate, the health risks we assess, and the remediation strategies we design, none of them are abstract. It connects directly to communities, to water, to people’s bodies and futures.

That connection is what keeps me going. More than a decade of hands-on laboratory experience has not made science feel routine. It has made the stakes feel more real.

Who are your role models?

My journey in science has never been shaped by individual ambition alone, but by the people who believed in me at different stages of my life: mentors, teachers, colleagues, faith leaders, and supporters who reminded me that potential can flourish even in places with limited resources. As a scientist from Ghana, I carry with me the conviction that geography should never define the limits of scientific contribution. I hope my journey reflects not only resilience and perseverance but also the importance of mentorship, community, and creating pathways for the next generation of African scientists, especially young women, to see themselves in science and believe that they belong there.There are many who have shaped me through direct, personal investment in my growth, and others whose accomplishments have quietly kept me moving when I needed a reason to continue.

The role models who have mattered most are not distant figures. They are people I have worked alongside, learned from directly, and watched navigate the same pressures I face.

Before my journey in academia, Rev. Dr. Eric Kwesi Annan, head pastor of Shepherd Baptist Church–Rohi Temple in Accra, Ghana, was a steady anchor in my life. He stepped into a fatherly role after I lost my father at a young age. As an educationist and passionate advocate for the girl child, he consistently encouraged young girls like me to hold onto our faith, walk in humility, and never be afraid of hard work or sacrifice. He is the kind of person who still celebrates your progress decades later. Every time I call to share an update, his joy is genuine and unchanged.

I am also deeply grateful to Mr. George Ogyire, who played a supportive and fatherly role throughout my educational journey. During my time at Accra Technical University, his financial support and encouragement sustained me through critical moments and helped make my education possible. Looking back, I see his kindness and generosity as one of the many ways people helped shape the path that brought me to where I am today.

Prof. Marian Asantewah Nkansah has always had an open door for me, and through that openness, she has shown me what a career woman in Ghanaian academic science actually looks like, not through words alone, but by letting me watch her walk the path. Her research on “Gaseous air quality and health risk assessment of high school kitchens in the Kumasi Metropolis” and other emerging pollutants has helped shape national policy. Beyond the science, her book Inspirational Quotes for Living, Volume One has stayed with me. In it, she writes that life is a journey but never a linear one, that you should not measure yourself against those you started with, but rather do your best with contentment, wherever you find yourself on the ladder. That reminder gives me the zeal to keep doing what I can. Her decision to convene the Women in Chemistry Network Ghana has also shaped me in a different way: it created an environment where I learned that giving back to society is as much a part of a scientific life as the research itself.

Prof. Nathaniel Owusu Boadi, also a mentor, has consistently encouraged me to pursue goals I was not yet certain I deserved to aspire to. He was the first person to expose me to the international scientific community through a Royal Society of Chemistry-sponsored training at JKUAT University in Kenya, and that single experience opened a world I had not previously imagined. It introduced me to opportunities, collaborations, and professional networks far beyond academia, while also giving me the confidence to actively seek international scientific platforms and experiences. His own journey to becoming one of the youngest professors in the college through discipline, perseverance, and consistency remains a model I deeply admire and strive to emulate. What has always stayed with me most is how genuinely happy he has been to see me grow.

Prof. Mercy Badu also challenged me to think beyond the limits I had quietly accepted for myself and opened doors in my career at moments when I most needed them.

Prof. Lawrence Sheringham Borquaye reminded me, early and unforgettably, that someone is always watching, not as a source of pressure, but as a call to consistency and integrity. When I first encountered him, I was torn between academia and industry, uncertain which path to choose. His response has stayed with me ever since: “Though you might want a change of environment and that is good remember the number of students you influence when they come for laboratory practical’s. Just change the way you do things, and you will enjoy what you do. Someone is watching. Do your best, leave the rest, and make an impact.” That conversation still carries me on difficult days.

My supervisor, Prof. Osei Akoto, has fundamentally shaped how I think about scientific research, particularly in analytical and environmental chemistry. His mentorship has taught me what it means to keep going after failure because he has never once allowed me to treat a setback as a stopping point.

Dr. Trinity Ama Tagbor, through the Women in Chemistry Network mentorship programme, gave me something specific and rare: a model of scientific excellence that was also warm, generous, and deliberately oriented toward bringing others along. That combination is one I aspire to embody.

I am also deeply inspired by Elsie Effah Kaufmann, whose dedication to science education, innovation, and mentorship continues to set a standard for what public scientific engagement can look like. Her ability to combine rigorous scholarship with accessibility motivates me to pursue research that is both impactful and visible, and to keep making space for more young women in STEM.

More broadly, I draw inspiration from women scientists who have built globally significant careers from under-resourced institutions in countries that the world too often overlooks. Their work is a standing argument against the idea that geography determines potential and a daily reminder that it does not determine mine.

How did you get to where you are in your career path?

There are a few moments that, looking back, were real hinges points where the path could have gone differently and did not.The first was choosing to do my national service at the Department of Chemistry at KNUST after completing my Higher National Diploma. What began as a one-year posting became a full-time role as a Laboratory Technician. I did not plan for that. It happened because I worked hard enough that someone noticed and offered me a position.

For several years, I built my practice in the laboratory setting, setting up practicals, supporting undergraduate teaching, learning instrumentation, developing skills in ICP-OES, AAS, GC-MS, and XRF through proximity, repetition, and the generosity of more experienced colleagues. I pursued a BSc in Science Laboratory Technology at the University of Cape Coast during that time, because I understood that experience without formal qualification had a ceiling.

The second hinge was deciding to pursue a master’s degree at KNUST while continuing to work full-time. That decision was not easy. The responsibilities did not pause laboratory management, student supervision, fieldwork, administrative duties, nor did the academic demands. But that year of balancing everything and succeeding academically.

My thesis began as a PFAS study. When instrument access made that impossible to pursue, the research was redirected toward heavy metal pollution and human health risk assessment at an abandoned waste disposal site in Kumasi. That redirection was frustrating at the time, but in hindsight, it taught me something critical about research: the ability to adapt without abandoning the underlying scientific question is itself a skill.

I was eventually promoted to Principal Laboratory Technician, a recognition that mattered to me not only professionally, but personally. It confirmed that the years of quiet, consistent work had been seen.

I am where I am because of hard work, resilience, and the people who opened doors and then refused to let me close them behind me.

What is the coolest project you have worked on and why?

My master’s thesis research, an investigation into heavy metal pollution and human health risks in soils from an abandoned waste disposal site in Kumasi, is the most intellectually demanding and personally meaningful project I have worked on.

What drew me in was interdisciplinary. The work required BCR sequential extraction to assess metal bioavailability, GIS-based geostatistical mapping to visualize spatial pollution patterns, and USEPA human health risk frameworks to evaluate both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic exposure pathways. Each method demanded technical precision. Together, they told a story about how abandoned sites continue to threaten ecosystems and communities long after their formal use has ended.

The moment that shifted my relationship to work was when the data stopped feeling like numbers and started feeling like evidence about real places and real people. The contamination levels we measured were not abstract figures; they mapped onto land where people live, work, and farm. That realization sharpened everything: why the methodology had to be rigorous, why the interpretations had to be careful, why the policy recommendations at the end of the thesis mattered.

The project also opened doors I had not anticipated. It deepened my interest in predictive modelling for ecological risk assessment, and it showed me what was missing: locally relevant, deployable monitoring tools that do not require the kind of advanced instrumentation that is often unavailable in Ghanaian research settings. That gap is now central to where I want to take my research.

The thesis also planted the seed for what I consider the logical next chapter: investigating PFAS contamination at Ghanaian e-waste and waste disposal sites, where almost no baseline data currently exists. Every good research project, I have come to believe, should leave you with more important questions than you started with. This one did.

What’s a time you felt immense pride in yourself / your work?

Several moments come to mind, but the ones that stay with me longest are not the most formally impressive.

The first time I led a training session for laboratory technicians on acid digestion protocols covering digestion mechanisms, chemical equations, safety procedures, SOPs, and QA/QC requirements, I felt something I had not quite felt before. I had learned most of what I was teaching through years of hands-on experience, through watching, asking, and sometimes making mistakes. Standing at the front of that room, giving those skills a formal structure and passing them on deliberately, felt like a completion of something. When colleagues asked thoughtful questions and then applied the protocols with more confidence in the days that followed, I understood for the first time what it means to multiply what you have been given.

Receiving my first-year Master’s results was another moment. Not because of the grade alone, but because of what it represented evidence that I could sustain serious academic work while carrying a full professional load.

When my research was accepted for both oral and poster presentations at KNUST Research Week and the College of Science Scientists’ Conference, I felt my work enter a wider conversation. That visibility was encouraging in a way that private achievement is not.

And then there was the Lindau notification. Reading that I had been selected as one of approximately 600 young scientists worldwide to attend the 75^th Nobel Laureate Meeting was one of those moments where I had to sit quietly for a while before I could respond to it. As a laboratory technician and researcher from Ghana, still completing my master’s degree, the selection felt like a validation of something I had been building for years without always being certain it was visible to anyone else. That confirmation mattered more to me than I had expected.

What is a “day in the life” of you like?

I arrive at the Department of Chemistry at KNUST at 7:30 a.m. The first stop is the general office to sign in, and then straight to the laboratory to assess what the day requires. Before students or colleagues arrive, I check on instruments, prepare reagents and solutions, arrange equipment, and confirm that safety protocols are in place. That early window — quiet, before the day fully starts is where a lot of problems get solved before they become problems.

As a Principal Laboratory Technician, a significant part of my morning is devoted to supporting undergraduate practical sessions. This means pairing students for experiments, demonstrating procedures, supervising safe laboratory practice, and answering questions that range from straightforward to genuinely interesting. I take undergraduate teaching support seriously; it is not incidental to my role; it is central to it. Many of the students I work with are encountering analytical chemistry for the first time, and how they experience that introduction matters.

Mid-morning through early afternoon varies considerably. On some days, I am coordinating instrument schedules and overseeing sample analysis for university departments or external clients. The Central Laboratory serves as a shared scientific resource, and maintaining its reliability is a responsibility I carry carefully. Other days are heavier on administrative work: emails, quality documentation, planning for upcoming sessions, responding to requests from researchers across the university.

When the schedule creates space, and I have learned to protect that space deliberately, I turn to my own research. This might mean reviewing recent literature on PFAS detection or electroanalytical sensing, processing data from my thesis work, interpreting results, or drafting sections of a manuscript. Research does not stop being important simply because the laboratory is busy around it.

Late afternoon sometimes brings meetings, consultations with postgraduate students, or activities connected to outreach and the Women in Chemistry Network. Evenings, when I am home, often belong to the work that does not fit the official working day: fellowship applications, PhD application materials, scientific writing, or preparing for upcoming presentations and workshops.

What I notice, on the days when I have space to notice it, is that I am genuinely running several careers in parallel: laboratory management, undergraduate teaching support, postgraduate research, science communication, and mentorship. That is demanding. It is also, most of the time, exactly what I want to be doing.

What are you seeking to accomplish in your career?

My most immediate goal is to defend my master’s thesis and graduate. Everything I am building points forward from there.

The next step is a PhD in Analytical Environmental Chemistry or Electroanalytical Chemistry, funded through scholarship or fellowship support. I am applying with the intention not simply to pursue more education, but to develop the specific technical and research capabilities that my longer-term goals require.

Those goals are grounded in a problem I cannot look away from. Illegal mining Galamsey is destroying Ghana’s rivers and water systems in ways that will take generations to recover from, if recovery is even possible without sustained scientific intervention. I want my research to be part of that intervention. Specifically, I am interested in PFAS contamination at e-waste and waste disposal sites, biosensor and electroanalytical tool development for affordable field-deployable contaminant detection, and nature-based remediation approaches using locally available materials such as coconut husk biochar.

My long-term ambition is to return to KNUST as a lecturer and researcher and to establish what I believe could be Ghana’s first Environmental Remediation and Water Security Laboratory, a facility dedicated to emerging contaminants, environmental risk assessment, remediation technology development, and sustainable monitoring systems designed for the Ghanaian and broader African context. That laboratory is not an abstraction for me. I have been thinking about what it needs, who it would serve, and how it would be built.

Beyond the research programme, I want to communicate science in ways that reach beyond academic journals through policy engagement, public outreach, LinkedIn, and eventually a podcast and writing. I believe scientific work that cannot be communicated to the people it is meant to serve is incomplete.

Ultimately, I want a career defined by rigor, service, and the specific ambition of building something lasting in the country I come from.

What do you like to do when you’re not doing research?

I play tennis, swim, and bake. Tennis is the activity that forces me most completely out of my own head. A laboratory problem or a difficult paragraph can follow me almost anywhere, but not onto a tennis court. The combination of physical demand and real-time strategic adjustment requires a quality of attention that leaves no space for anything else. I value that enforced presence.

Swimming works differently. It is quieter, more meditative. After long stretches of data analysis or thesis writing, the water has a way of resetting something, not by distracting me, but by giving my mind room to settle. Some of my clearest thinking about research problems has happened in the water, unprompted, when I was not trying to solve anything.

Baking is where I find the most joy. I bake cakes for family and friends, and I have noticed over the years how much it resembles laboratory work, the precision of measurements, the chemistry of emulsification and leavening, the importance of sequence and timing. But the emotional register is completely different. The laboratory asks me to be rigorous in the service of accuracy. The kitchen asks me to be rigorous in the service of pleasure and generosity. The cake goes somewhere. Someone eats it and feels cared for. That directness of impact, immediate, personal, and warmly received, is its own kind of satisfaction.

What advice do you have for other women interested in science / in your discipline?

I changed schools as a teenager to study science when my community expected me to choose something safer. I spent over a decade as a laboratory technician before pursuing postgraduate study. My thesis research was redirected mid-stream when the instrumentation I needed was unavailable. None of that was the plan. All of it shaped me.

So the first thing I would say is this: a non-linear path is not a delayed path. The years I spent in the laboratory before my master’s degree did not set me back; they gave me a kind of practical depth that I could not have acquired any other way. If your journey does not look like the standard template, that is not evidence that something has gone wrong.

Seek mentorship deliberately and find communities that hold you accountable while also holding you up. The Women in Chemistry Network, the Ghana Chemical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry these networks have been as professionally transformative for me as any formal qualification. Science is not a solitary pursuit, and you do not have to navigate it as though it were.

Develop your communication skills with the same seriousness you give to technical training. The ability to write clearly, speak confidently, and translate complex scientific ideas for different audiences is not a supplementary skill; it determines whether your research reaches the people it is meant to serve.

Apply for things before you feel ready. Many of the opportunities that have defined my career began with deciding to try despite uncertainty. The Lindau selection, the fellowship applications, and the conference presentations, none of them began with complete confidence. They began with a decision, and finally, your specific context, your geography, your community, and the particular environmental problems you grew up watching are not a limitation. It is your sharpest scientific asset. The questions that emerge from living in Ghana, from watching water systems degrade, from working in under-resourced laboratories, are not lesser questions. They are urgent ones, claim them.

In your opinion, what will be the next great breakthrough in science / in your discipline?

I work in a country where some of the most pressing environmental questions PFAS contamination at e-waste sites, heavy metal loading from illegal mining, and long-term toxicity of abandoned waste disposal sites remain largely unanswered, partly because the instrumentation required to answer them is expensive, inaccessible, or simply not present. That experience shapes how I think about where the field is going and what breakthroughs will actually matter.

The development that excites me most is the convergence of affordable electroanalytical sensing technologies with AI-assisted environmental modelling. Portable, field-deployable biosensors and electrochemical detection tools capable of identifying heavy metals, PFAS, and endocrine-disrupting compounds at trace levels without requiring centralized laboratory infrastructure could transform environmental monitoring into resource-limited settings. The science underpinning these tools is advancing rapidly. The gap that remains is translation: moving from laboratory proof-of-concept to practical, deployable systems designed for the conditions that actually exist in places like Ghana.

At the same time, machine learning is beginning to change what is possible in contaminant source apportionment, predictive risk modelling, and spatial pollution mapping. The combination of larger environmental datasets made possible by more accessible instrumentation with AI-driven pattern recognition will, I believe, significantly improve early-warning systems and policy-relevant environmental assessments.

In remediation science, I anticipate meaningful advances in nature-based and bio-inspired technologies, particularly the use of agricultural waste-derived biochar and natural biosorbents for scalable, low-cost pollutant removal from water and soil. The materials science is becoming clearer. The challenge now is demonstrating effectiveness at scale and building the institutional frameworks to deploy these solutions where they are most needed.

For African environmental chemistry specifically, I think the combination of these three trajectories accessible sensing, AI-driven monitoring, and sustainable remediation could reshape how we address the pollution legacy of mining, e-waste, and industrial waste. That reshaping would be scientifically significant. It would be consequential for the health and futures of millions of people.

What should be done to increase the number of female scientists and professors?