Hakeem Oluseyi inspires Mason students with “hope, hustle, and help”

Professor Hakeem Oluseyi attributes his unlikely rise from the pull of poverty and crime to hope, hustle, and help, and he wants to pay it forward. 

Now a renowned astrophysicist, inventor, and author who regularly offers his expert analysis on TV, George Mason University Visiting Robinson Professor Hakeem Oluseyi credits education as his gateway to a better life. Raised by a single mother with little education, he lived in some of the nation’s toughest neighborhoods while constantly moving around and eventually being drawn into criminal activities at a young age. 

An unlikely journey 

A career in astrophysics seemed unlikely at best during Oluseyi’s youth, when stability was little more than a wishful fantasy following his parents’ divorce when he was 4 years old. His mother desperately sought opportunities to improve their lives, so the family was often on the move. Oluseyi says he never attended the same school or lived in the same state for more than two consecutive years, with the family often moving multiple times during the school year. 

As a result, Oluseyi has experienced daily life in some of the nation’s toughest neighborhoods, including Houston’s 3rd Ward, New Orleans’s 9th Ward, and South Central Los Angeles, where some of his cousins were part of the notorious Crips gang who were, according to Oluseyi, “robbing banks and worse.” 

In the final 16 months of that difficult 10-year stretch, Oluseyi lived in nine different households while attending five different schools in three different states. 

Through it all, a young Oluseyi found refuge from the chaos in books, and his mental acuity quickly drew the attention of teachers and others, who saw his vast potential and helped guide him to another path. 

After enlisting in the U.S. Navy at age 17, Oluseyi eventually received a dual bachelor of science degree from Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Oluseyi has chronicled his stirring personal story in his bestselling memoir, A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars. 

Engage students, change lives 

Oluseyi, who was the first person in his family to graduate from high school, now boasts a PhD from Stanford University and has held previous professorships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California-Berkeley.

He was the chief science officer for Discovery Communications and spent 2016 to 2019 at NASA’s headquarters, where he served as the space science education manager for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate via the Intergovernmental Personnel Act Mobility Program. He has written or co-written more than 100 scientific publications and has 11 patents. 

Oluseyi hopes to help change the lives of Mason students the same positive ways that others did for him many years ago. He says part of why he wanted to come to Mason, out of all the colleges and universities in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, was to be somewhere he could make a direct impact on students from working-class communities. 

Oluseyi began teaching classes in the spring 2022 semester, and he plans to engage with student groups and students in his classes to help grow community.