Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Win­ner of the Pres­i­dent's Medal Shas­tri Ram start­ed his new job as a project as­sis­tant yes­ter­day at state en­ter­prise Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co). Ram said he hoped "to leave a mark" at the com­pa­ny at the end of his 12-month stint. He said he had ap­plied to sev­er­al com­pa­nies but was un­suc­cess­ful. Ram thanked Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er for of­fer­ing him the job. Last week when they met at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, Warn­er asked Ram what were his in­ten­tions and he said he had ap­plied to sev­er­al com­pa­nies but was told the ap­pli­ca­tions were still be­ing processed.

Warn­er im­me­di­ate­ly of­fered Ram a job. Warn­er al­so at­tend­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege. Ram and Ker­ry Singh, of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, copped the pres­ti­gious medal for their out­stand­ing suc­cess in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (Cape). The young schol­ar will take up his open schol­ar­ship at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty (CMU), Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia, Unit­ed States, in the next aca­d­e­m­ic year. Ac­cord­ing to its web site, the CMU is a con­sis­tent­ly top-ranked uni­ver­si­ty. The uni­ver­si­ty is home to 18 No­bel Lau­re­ates in five of the six cat­e­gories. Ram said he was thank­ful to be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with Nid­co and was look­ing for­ward to work­ing along­side the en­gi­neers. He met with Warn­er and Nid­co's pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles at the new build­ing on Mel­bourne Street, Port-of-Spain.

Warn­er said he hoped young peo­ple could em­u­late Ram, who rep­re­sent­ed hard work. He said: "If there is some way we can use Shas­tri to help them to de­vel­op, to change their lifestyles and to be­come more ded­i­cat­ed." Charles said Ram would be shown a full range of Nid­co's op­er­a­tions. He said Nid­co was hap­py to have Ram "in our cor­ri­dors for the next year." Ram said he was "en­thused and ex­cit­ed" about the op­por­tu­ni­ty. He will pur­sue stud­ies in me­chan­i­cal and ro­bot­ic en­gi­neer­ing at CMU.