Serena Omo-Lamai, a seventeen-year-old Nigerian, has been offered admission into 13 Universities in the United States and Canada. She was presented with the offers from the universities following her outstanding academic performances, typified by her graduation from Dowen College in Lagos, as the school’s valedictorian for the 2014/2015 session.
Serena, who says she wants to be a medical engineer, has however chosen to study Bio-Medical Engineering at Syracuse University in the United States. In an interview with the press, she also spoke of her elation at the multiple offers, and her desire to “justify” her admission into Syracuse.
“I chose Syracuse University because it has a very good research lab and the offer came with $51,000 scholarship”, she explained. “My hope is to study medicine for a second degree, but I would have to be a medical engineer”.
There is at least a hint of a desire to serve her people underlying Serena’s career decision. She pointed to what she perceived as a gap in the country’s medical technology, which she believed she could help to fill by becoming a medical engineer.
“Most of the medical equipment in the country is imported, and I would like a situation where medical equipment is manufactured here in Nigeria”, she said.
According to Serena, her parents are her role models; but she is also inspired by “anyone who is hard working, anyone who puts in much effort into what they do”.
She will be hoping to stand out from the world of the Syracuse University campus, dominated as it is by the colour orange (getting Nigeria’s green and white noticed for good reasons wouldn’t be a bad thing to do). Fortunately, she knows what that would require, and she has been at it for a good while already.
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