UG’s Dr Edem Mahu listed among National Geographic’s 2021 Emerging Explorer Cohort

Dr Edem Mahu, a lecturer of Marine Geochemistry at the Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences of the University of Ghana, has been selected as part of 15 global changemakers to be included in the National Geographic Society‘s 2021 Emerging Explorer Cohort.

The National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit organization that uses the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world.

“To achieve the National Geographic Society’s mission to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world, we identify, invest in, and uplift inspiring individuals who are changing the world one idea at a time. That’s why the Society has selected 15 global changemakers to comprise the 2021 Emerging Explorer cohort,” National Geographic stated on its website.

The 15 global changemakers, according to National Geographic, are conducting innovative work focused on a range of topics such as inventing space technologies, ocean exploration, understanding the past through archaeology and anthropology, species conservation, storytelling, and elevating young voices for the future of education.

Dr Edem Mahu earned her PhD in Oceanography at the University Ghana in 2014. As a Marine Geochemist with a specialization in paleo studies at, she studies past environmental conditions in the coastal marine environment.

Her research pioneered the use of radioisotopes in reconstructing the pollution history of heavy metals in nearshore systems in the Gulf of Guinea over the last 150 to 200 years.

She is currently the lead researcher of an OWSD funded project that is developing cheap and easily accessible android coupled soil nutrient test kits to guide fertilization application in farmlands around coastal water bodies in Ghana. She also co-leads the citizen science project COLLECT, which gathers data on marine plastic debris.

Dr Mahu is also leading research in toxicology funded by the IFS that seeking to evaluate ecological and human health risks associated with heavy metal pollution in coastal Ghana. She is a key research personnel on the GCRF funded project on Global Food Safety and ecosystem functioning implications of nano and micro-scale plastics in coastal Ghana.

She is an affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences, a Future Leaders African Independent Research Fellow through the Royal Society, and an Early Career Research Fellow of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World.

Dr Mahu is also the country coordinator of the NF-POGO Alumni Network global project on the observation of essential ocean parameters across the world. She has been co-directing the Regional Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Ghana since 2016.

She is a recipient of a number of prestigious awards and research fellowships including an OWSD Early Career Fellowship, two IFS research grants, an H. Thomas Harvey Research Fellowship award and a California State University Council on Ocean Affairs, Science and Technology (CSU-COAST) award.

Dr Mahu is also passionate about mentoring young girls into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programmes.