Growing up in arid Turkana in northern Kenya influenced Sarah Osama’s decision to research drought-tolerant crops. “In Turkana we always depended on aid, and I didn’t like that,” she says. “At times we’d go without food at our boarding school for primary students, and would have to line up at the Red Cross for handouts.” Osama was a teenager when her father died, and she had to work to help her mother support the family’s four children. “Mom had to take loans to keep us in school,” she says. “My uncle was doing an MBA and he encouraged me to apply to university.”