Sierra Leonean Woman Becomes First Deaf, Black Woman in U.S. to be Awarded Doctorate in STEM

Amie Fornah Sankoh, a Sierra Leonean woman who lost her hearing at the age of three and grew up during the Sierra Leone civil war has recently become the first deaf, Black woman in the United States to be given a PhD in any scientific, technical, engineering, or math area.

Amie Fornah Sankoh received her PhD from the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Tennessee Knoxville on Saturday. It’s an incredible accomplishment for a lady who struggled in primary school because she couldn’t hear. According to Sankoh, who talked with Chemistry World, her family opted to relocate to the United States in the hopes that she might regain her hearing.

“My father sent me to live with his best friend in America, who adopted me,” Sankoh said. “Doctors in the US could not cure my deafness, but I was able to join the deaf community where I learned American Sign Language [ASL] over the next few years.”

While she struggled in school in the United States, it was a math lesson that opened her eyes to the possibility of working in the STEM industry one day.

“Mathematics is just very visual, and I was able to enjoy that,” Sankoh recalled. “Anytime a person talked, I didn’t understand anything, but when they would write out the formulas then I could see it and I could see each step of how to solve that problem.”

It was in high school Amina began to soar to become a standout among her peers.

“In high school, I really fell in love with the more complex mathematics, which is why I got into chemistry. I was able to learn about and see chemical reactions – how the reactions occur – and then make predictions. It was very exciting – with the reaction, you’d have to write it down and draw it out.”

Sankoh went on obtain an associate degree in laboratory sciences and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology. She would thereafter work in a laboratory.

“I was participating in research and enjoying it, and learning and experiencing the beauty of it, and then started to discover my own potential,” she said. “And that led me to go ahead and enter the PhD program at UT Knoxville.”

She believes that now that she has a PhD, she might inspire other individuals who are deaf to follow their dreams regardless of their circumstances.

“I can’t tell you how many times I had self-doubt and thought I’m not able, I’m not going to pass,” she explained. ‘The journey was very challenging, but with the right mentor I was able to overcome – I was able to focus on the science rather than on just advocating for my inclusion and accessibility.”