Draft:Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike

Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike ( Njoku).. is a Nigerian-Finnish scientist working at the Division of  Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research area is in the field of pharmaceutical biology with special emphasis on bioactivity screening and characterization of medicinal plants as sources of antimicrobial compounds and extracts for drug discovery. She is an award winning scientist whose work has been recognized globally in the area of Medicine and Pharmacology. She is currently working on Finnish willow species (Salix spp.) as sources of novel antimicrobial extracts and compounds at the University of Helsinki

Early life and education
Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike (nee Njoku) was born in Okwuato, Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria to the family of Mr Julius Benard and Mrs Angelina Nwakaego Njoku. She grew up in Imo State in her village in Ibekuta Ibeku Okwuato and was the 5th of the eight children of Mr Julius Bernard who sponsored her education through his public service job. She got admission into the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Nigeria where she studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2004. After the one year mandatory National Youth Service in Nigeria, Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike enrolled for a Masters program in Organic Chemistry at the Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture and completed her Master of Science degree in Organic Chemistry where she published two scientific articles in 2010. In 2012, she moved to Finland and later got a Ph.D. admission at the University of Helsinki. In 2015 she presented her research work focusing on antimicrobial research at the European University Consortium for Pharmaceutical Sciences in Châtenay-Malabry, France and also at the Congress of the Society for Medicinal Plants and Natural Products Research (GA) in Hungary where she talked about thin-layer chromatography method optimization of a Piper guineense extract

Career
Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike joined the University of Helsinki, Finland as a doctoral researcher and defended her Ph.D. in 2019. She has been conducting research on the bioactivity screening of medicinal plants against pathogenic bacterial strains of clinical importance and detailed characterisation studies of these novel antimicrobial substances to enhance antimicrobial drug discovery. She has successfully found new antibacterial and antifungal compounds from natural sources to address the problem of antimicrobial resistant pathogen s. She has optimised and developed an analytical tool for the analysis of Piper plant extracts in search of new antimicrobial compounds. She presented her work at the Nordic Natural Product Conference  and other international conferences in Pharmaceutical sciences

Awards
2021 Best paper award in Medicine and Pharmacology