Have you met?
Amie Fornah Sankoh, PhD, a new Postdoctoral Associate at the Danforth Center is the first deaf, Black woman to receive a doctorate in any scientific, technical, engineering and maths discipline in the US, and possibly the world.
Amie joined the Danforth Center along with Dr. Tessa Burch-Smith and her lab in 2021. As a PhD student from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Amie’s research is focused on intercellular signaling in plants. Completing a PhD is a challenging undertaking for anyone; to do so without easy access to the kinds of verbal communication that hearing people take for granted, along with the unique challenges of being a Black woman in science, requires a whole different level of determination.
But anyone who knows Amie will tell you that she is not one to be easily deterred.
"She is always smiling, always happy, always warmly greets everyone she encounters,” said Tessa. “Amie brings this spirit with her everywhere she goes. She accomplishes things even though she is terrified – and this PhD is no exception.” Amie took on the challenge of getting accepted and completing grad school as a Deaf person in an environment that had never had a Deaf PhD student.
Amie grew up in Sierra Leone during the civil war and lost her hearing around three years old. On May 20, she graduated and received her PhD from the University of Tennessee (UT) Knoxville’s Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology.
That’s a far cry from the 12-year-old girl who was failing elementary school in Sierra Leone because she couldn’t hear, and was sent to the US in the hopes that her deafness could be cured there.
