Hakeem Oluseyi, Nigerian astrophysicist, and president of the National Society of Black Physicists will address the 2023 master’s and doctoral graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science advanced degree ceremony on Wednesday, May 31.
According to a statement from MIT School of Science’s official Twitter handle, “Graduates of all master’s and doctoral programmes through the School of Science will be recognised during an in-person, school-specific ceremony billed to hold inside the Kresge auditorium by 3 pm.”
Oluseyi, an American of Nigerian descent, who is a STEM educator, multi-patented inventor, voice actor, television personality, and science communicator is billed to address the graduating students and audience during the ceremony.
He recently served as the space science education lead for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) space mission directorate headquartered in Washington, D.C. where he provided strategic leadership and management for investments in science education and communications.
Read also: Gov Abdulrazaq unveils second term agenda
The renowned scientific researcher has made in-roads from his research which he calls “hacking stars” to better understand our universe and develop innovative new technologies.
Leveraging techniques for interpreting electromagnetic radiation, laboratory plasma physics, computational modeling, machine learning, time-domain informatics, big data analytics, and high-performance computing, his work has resulted in 11 patents, and more than 100 publications covering contributions to astrophysics, cosmology, and plasma physics, and the development of space missions, observatories, focal plane instruments, detectors, semiconductor manufacturing, and ion propulsion.
Oluseyi attended HBCU Tougaloo College where he obtained Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Mathematics.
He obtained his MSc, and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Stanford University under the mentorship of the late Arthur Walker Jnr.
Under Walker’s tutelage, Oluseyi assisted to design, build, calibrate, and launch the Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array, which pioneered normal incidence extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray imaging of the sun’s transition region and corona.
Besides, he has received multiple fellowships and appointments, including MIT Martin Luther King, Jnr. visiting scholar at MIT. Oluseyi’s memoir titled “A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars” was released in 2021.
Although he was born in New Orleans, the United States on March 13, 1967, James Plummer Jnr somehow found his way through this quagmire, earning a doctorate in physics from Stanford University in California.
It was after this that he changed his name to Hakeem Muata Oluseyi to honour his African ancestors.
