Cameroonian doctoral student finds second home at UND

Eugene Oga turns broken glass and a question into lifelong pursuit of truth through analytical chemistry

For Eugene Oga, a doctoral student in UND’s Department of Chemistry, his life’s work began with a broken glass.

“When I was a baby, I broke a glass and I was punished for that,” he recalled. “I asked a question: Was it my fault that the person did not make the glass strong? That’s just where everything started.”

What could have been a fleeting childhood curiosity sent Oga on a path across the world — from Cameroon to North Dakota. He followed chemistry wherever it led him.

Today, Oga is in his fourth year in UND’s chemistry doctoral program and has a reputation as both a leader and a researcher whose work answers questions for industry and energy labs.

From Cameroon to Grand Forks

It wasn’t always easy, though. His path to UND weathered a national crisis in Cameroon, a trying graduate-school admissions process and a first month in North Dakota that tested his resolve and the kindness of strangers.

Oga began his collegiate journey at the University of Buea in Southwest Cameroon, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in materials chemistry. He first faced hurdles when the Anglophone Crisis of 2016, which led to teacher strikes and student protests in Buea, interrupted his studies.

Oga returned home briefly during the protests, but he remained undeterred.

“They stopped studies for that year. Like most of my friends, we left school and went back home,” he recalled. “But I told myself I had to go back and finish.”

He finished in 2020 with encouragement from a mentor, who also urged him to pursue graduate study.

“My advisor called and spoke to me — a motherly kind of talk,” Oga said. “That motivated me to continue.”

But graduate school abroad wasn’t originally in his plans. In fact, a first attempt to attend graduate school in the U.S. fell through, and it wasn’t until he spoke with a UND-trained professor in Cameroon that the idea was revived.

When Oga finally applied broadly — to UND, Wyoming and South Florida, among other programs — the acceptances arrived all at once.

He looked into where Cameroonian chemistry students had found success in the U.S., and saw UND’s strong track record.

“When I put all those options together, UND was the right pick,” he said. He arrived in the U.S. on Aug. 7, 2022, and at UND on Aug. 13, 2022, a date he marks precisely: “Yesterday marked exactly three years.”

His first week stateside was anything but simple. The weather stranded him overnight in Chicago. Then, while temporarily living on 32nd Avenue South in Grand Forks, he walked for an hour and 47 minutes to get to campus for his diagnostic exams.

“I didn’t know I could use a student ID to take a bus,” he said with a smile.

Support from UND’s Angel Fund helped him secure an apartment near campus, a major factor in getting comfortable with Grand Forks and the University early on.

“It wasn’t easy — honestly — but the community was kind.”

Initially trained in materials chemistry, Oga shifted to analytical chemistry at UND under co-advisors Alena Kubatova and Evgueni Kozliak, both professors in UND’s Department of Chemistry.

“They understood my background and tailored my research within analytical chemistry to the direction I initially wanted to go,” Oga said. “That’s why my work focuses on analytical method development and its applications.”

For the layperson, Oga describes chemistry as a triangle — structure, properties and performance — with analytical methods at the center, tying everything together.

“Analytical chemistry is at the very core — the characterization that lets you tailor structure and properties for performance,” he said.

As if shifting his academic focus weren’t enough, Oga soon began working as a TA. Though initially apprehensive, his lab mate, Nafisa Bala, became a crucial resource for English and teaching.

“My English — people said it was good — but the students don’t always hear what you say the way you think,” he said. He shadowed a senior TA on Tuesdays and taught his own Organic Chemistry 341 labs on Wednesdays. “Once I started doing that, I began getting positive feedback.”

Looking back, Oga credits much of his successful transition to Bala, his advisors and the other students in the chemistry department.

“Basically, everything I know now, she taught me,” he said. “The whole of that fall semester, I was just learning instruments. It was tough. But if they weren’t getting tired explaining things, then I shouldn’t get tired trying them.”

Research with real-world impact

Oga has used his time at UND to pursue research with practical impact.

In his first year at UND, for example, Oga worked with Marvin Windows and Doors to investigate the issue of window sealants failing before the promised 10 to 20 years. Oga developed a simple two-step test for sealant samples, even when their age is unknown.

First, a quick-heating test showed Oga how each sample reacts to fast-rising temperatures. Then, a second test broke the material apart to identify its components. Together, the results revealed the factors leading to sealant failures, giving Marvin a clearer way to spot problems in materials and build longer-lasting products.

More recently, in his UND chemistry lab, he is investigating how common plastic (polyethylene) breaks down when heated and whether it can be turned into fuel. By carefully tracking compounds that form as the plastics break down, he’s laying the groundwork for the process improvements that come next.

Outside the laboratory, Oga does his best to help other international students. “The year after I came to North Dakota, Cameroonians were coming,” he said. “I picked them up from the airport and took them to school,” thus hoping to ease what for many students is a difficult transition.

On campus, meanwhile, he’s helped convert UND’s Chemistry Graduate Student Association into an officially recognized American Chemical Society Graduate Student & Postdoc Organization, building a network that will give fellow chemistry students access to national resources. He and his team also launched the Red River Valley Younger Chemists Committee, earning ACS starter seed funding.

Helping other chemists find their way

Perhaps because of the forward momentum he’s built, Oga now serves on the Chemistry Department recruitment committee and the UND University Senate Committee on Diversity. These roles have given him a greater perspective on leadership and its rewards, he said.

“If the person who succeeds you is not successful, then you were not successful,” he said. “I believe in collaborative leadership.”

Oga still occasionally dreams of Cameroon, although visa restrictions have complicated travel home.

“I grew up going to the river, to the farm, with my friends. We did everything as a group,” he said. “That’s what I think of when I think of Cameroon.”

While Oga finds things different in the States, he’s found a new community at UND, and helping new international students navigate the University has helped him find his place.

His biggest advice to those students?

“Get involved,” he said. “UND has a lot of resources that allow students to grow — if you make yourself available to use them. Don’t just finish the Ph.D.; leave it better than you met it.”