Webe Kadima
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Webe Celine Kadima (born 1958) is currently a professor of Biochemistry in the Faculté of Médecine of the Université Notre Dame du Kasayi (UKA). She was previously an associate professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Oswego.[1][2]
Kadima was born in Burundi and moved to the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was 4 years old.[3] She grew up there, and studied at the School for Girls of the Janua Caeli Institute, in the city of Kananga, completing secondary school in Kinshasa (1975).[4] After spending one year at the University of Kinshasa, in the Department of Chemistry, she moved to Montréal, Canada, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, and a Master of Science in Physical Chemistry at the University of Montreal.[5] Her father was a diabetic and died from complications from diabetes while she was at the University of Montreal.[6] She, then, moved to Edmonton, Canada, where she earned a PhD in bioanalytical chemistry from the University of Alberta.[5] Her Ph.D. research work investigated the Chemistry of the toxicology of cadmium in red blood cells.[5]
Career
After graduating from the University of Alberta, Kadima held several different research and teaching positions including Research Biochemist at the University of California, Riverside and Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Florida International University and eventually became a professor at the State University of New York at Oswego.[3][5] In 2004 she returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a sabbatical to collaborate on research projects, focusing on plants traditionally used to treat diabetes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2006, she has traveled to the country twice per year for this work. [7][5] She created a nonprofit called the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute (BBRI), whose mission was to investigate medicinal plants used in the Congo and to develop pharmaceutical preparations that would be affordable, effective and safe.[5]
She has also worked to create an ongoing exchange of African students with the State University of New York at Oswego.[8] In 2010 it was announced that she had received a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant for the study of how to expand the number of women in science.[9][10]
