Chi Onwurah

In 2020 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association

She was re-elected at the 2019 general election, and again, Newcastle Central was the first seat in the United Kingdom to be declared.

In 2018, Onwurah was added to the Computer Weekly 'Most Influential Women in UK IT' Hall of Fame alongside Hannah Dee, Sarah Wood and Sherry Coutu.

Onwurah retained her seat at the 2017 general election, increasing Labour's share of the vote to 65%. Newcastle Central was the first constituency to declare a result at the general election that year.

In the January 2016 reshuffle, Onwurah's frontbench role for culture and the digital economy was briefly split between herself and Thangam Debbonaire. According to Onwurah, Corbyn did not communicate this change to either MP directly or tell Debbonaire when he reversed his decision, leaving them in limbo as to their precise responsibilities. Moreover, he refused requests for clarification. A spokesman for Corbyn's office, disputing the lack of "negotiation" in January, said "at no point was anyone sacked. We regret that Chi feels she was singled out, but this was clearly not the case. Chi Onwurah’s comments relate to a discussion about the delineation of shadow cabinet roles last January, as is not uncommon in both shadow cabinets and cabinets."

Onwurah backed Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election, but remained a Labour frontbencher. In August 2016, during the Labour leadership campaign she publicly supported Owen Smith's calls for a second referendum on the UK's EU membership

In the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, Onwurah announced her support for Andy Burnham, having originally nominated Jeremy Corbyn to "broaden the debate". Onwurah is the only engineer in the post-2015 Parliamentary Labour Party.

After Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership election of the Labour party in September 2015, Onwurah was made a Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, as well as a Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport.

In February 2014, Onwurah spoke in a parliamentary debate she had called on gender-specific toy marketing and lent her support to the campaign Let Toys Be Toys. In her speech to the House of Commons, she said:

She was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle upon Tyne Central at the 2010 general election with a majority of 7,466. She described Parliament as a "culture shock" but also said that compared with her engineering background "parliament is the most diverse working environment I've ever been in, the most gender balanced".

Onwurah supported Ed Miliband in the 2010 Labour Party leadership election. Miliband appointed Onwurah as a junior shadow minister for Business, Innovation and Skills on 10 October 2010. In 2013 she was given the role as a Shadow Minister in the Cabinet Office.

Onwurah graduated from Imperial College London in 1987 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. She worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development and strategy for a variety of mainly private sector companies in a number of different countries – the UK, France, the United States, Nigeria and Denmark while studying for an MBA at Manchester Business School.

Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (born 12 April 1965) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central since the 2010 general election. She is Newcastle's first black MP. She was shadow minister for Industrial Strategy, Science and Innovation from October 2016 until 9 April 2020, then being appointed as shadow minister for Science, Research & Digital.

After Onwurah was born in Wallsend, Northumberland, her family moved to Awka, Nigeria, in 1965 while she was still a baby. Just two years later the Biafra War broke out, bringing famine with it, forcing her mother to bring the children back to Tyneside, while her father stayed there in the Biafran army.

Onwurah's mother was from Newcastle. Her father, from Nigeria, was working as a dentist while he studied at Newcastle University Medical School when they met and married in the 1950s.