As a little girl Khadijah Ismail would spend hours watching aeroplanes through the window of the attic bedroom she shared with her sister near Manchester Airport. She even wrote the airport a letter "on fancy paper and everything", giving her address and asking them to send more planes past her house. The eldest of four children, Khadijah loved maths and got a scholarship to a highly academic private day school. Her mum and dad hoped she would be the first in the family with a university degree. At 16 she won a prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarship and put the award, of several hundred pounds, towards buying a robot for her school.