Femi Fadugba

Femi Fadugba believes the story of physics is too powerful to stay in the lab. He was the middle-schooler who got handed a quantum physics book by the school custodian—and never looked back. He earned an MEng in Materials Science from Oxford University, where he co-authored a Physical Review Letters paper in quantum computing, and later completed a Master of Public Administration (MPA) at the University of Pennsylvania as a Thouron Scholar. He worked in consulting, solar energy, and the creative arts before returning to Oxford as a Dummett Fellow at New College.

Femi’s debut young adult novel, The Upper World, fuses South London life with time-travel physics; it sparked a 15-way auction and is in development at Netflix with Daniel Kaluuya attached to star in and produce. Its sequel, The Mirror World (2025), brings quantum mechanics to the fore.

Today, Femi leads ShepherdXR, a nonprofit building VR experiences that help middle schoolers master math and, in his words, “speak the language of physics” for themselves. His through-line—on the page, in the lab, and now in the headset—is simple: turn big ideas into stories people can feel and futures young people can choose.