Dr Patrick Watson and Prof John Agard were among more than 15 researchers presented with achievement awards at the first University of the West Indies (UWI) Research Award Ceremony. Held at the Daaga Auditorium, UWI, St Augustine, last Wednesday, the awards were presented for outstanding research in various academic fields from sciences to liberal arts.
Agard received the award for Most Internationally Successful Research Project for his team in the Department of Life Sciences Project for Ecosystem Services (Proecoserv). The project has garnered more than $18 million in funding from local and international organisations such as the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) and the United Nations Environmental Programme.
The Proecoserv team has also produced 135 internationally referenced publications. The research focused on areas of dengue epidemiology and control, plant breeding, aquaponics, ecosystem services and induced plant disease resistance.
Watson, director of the UWI Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (Salises), received an award on behalf of his department for Most Productive Research Department. In the past three years, Salises has received two major grants from the International Research Development Fund and the European Development Fund worth more than $16 million.
Salises' research has focused on growth and development in the region specifically pertaining to education, public policy and the importance of informal and formal financial sectors. Minister of Tertiary Education and Skills Training, Fazal Karim, also presented an additional 11 researchers with awards totalling $9 million through the Research and Development Impact Fund.
The fund was established in 2006 in a Government/UWI partnership to sponsor research in some of the most pressing developmental areas in the region such as climate change, crime, economic diversification and public health.
All speakers, who included National Gas Company (NGC) president Indar Maharaj and UWI principal Clement Sankat offered congratulations to those who received awards. However, vice chancellor Nigel Harris said the university was still grappling with translating research into concrete enterprises and products, and the public was still unaware of the research being done at UWI even as it directly affected them.