Abdullah Okunola

Course studying

Electrical and Electronic Engineering, PhD

Research area

Power electronics for industrial applications

What made you want to become an engineer?

The desire to create solutions that address the challenges of society is my main drive for wanting to become an engineer. Clearly there are a lot of things in nature that engineers have successfully produced to help advance the course of humanity — submarines, aircraft, the use of the electromagnetic spectrum for communication and so forth. I hope to grow to have the requisite capacity to do important things for humanity as well.

Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

I hope over the next five years to have acquired some proficiency with power electronics and crucially, the capacity to carry out research independently and collaboratively to leverage power electronics to meet societal needs.

Abdullah Akolade stood in front of a river in a park

Why is Black History Month an important celebration for you?

I believe events like this help drive the point home that all of what we do has to be about humanity. It perhaps may help to enlighten some misinformed individuals that success, just like failure, is not limited to certain types of human beings alone, and it has nothing to do with the skin colour. It would help highlight that there are challenges across all societies, and that these can only be overcome by forging useful collaborations, and not by isolationist tendencies.

What are your experiences as a person of colour in the UK?

Thankfully, my experiences have been largely positive as an individual. I am fortunate to have met very kind people who have related with me without considering my skin colour in a negative way.

On the back of global movements to promote equality among humans of all colours, I think that it is important for me to state that my experiences may not be very representative as I was not born and bred here in the UK. That point is also key because my expectations of other humans as an individual may not necessarily be the same with those of others. As a minimum, I expect basic decency and respect for humanity from other people.

Who would you say your role model is?

As a Muslim, Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) is who I seek to emulate. Apart from his decency and respect for humanity, he outrightly condemned any views that suggested that individuals from one race or tribe are superior to others.

However, since the Prophet Muhammad is not here with us today, the person that I see and strive to surpass is my dad who has been able to expertly manage his successful professional life with being there all the time for all of my family. He, along with my mum, my wife, my siblings and the rest of the family, inspires me a lot, and I aim to make all of them proud and be there for all of them.

How do you think the faculty and University can further progress inclusion and diversity?

I believe that beyond the University, and in the spirit of forging useful collaborations and promoting equality, there has to be useful engagements between those who are Black and those who are not. It is when these conversations happen that each side involved can get to truly understand the peculiarities of everyone and agree to how to manage things in the short-term and promote equality and unity in the long-term.

I believe that the Faculty and the University should continue to encourage collaborations between people of different colours when it comes to planning and developing projects, research exercises and all of that. With as many voices as possible represented in these projects, issues like disparities in functionalities such as facial recognition and so forth between Blacks and non-blacks would have been catered to at the conception of these beautiful technologies.