An­na-Lisa Paul

As the on­ly pro­fes­sion­al as­tronomer in the Caribbean, Dr Shirin Haque has been de­scribed as a pi­o­neer in her cho­sen field of which there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly on­ly 13,000 in the world.

Se­lect­ed as the 2020 lau­re­ate of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Award for Ex­cel­lence in the area of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Haque re­ceived her award from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes on Fri­day, with a broad smile be­hind her face mask and a mes­sage that it is pos­si­ble to achieve your dreams.

In brief re­marks, Haque ad­dressed the small gath­er­ing with the tra­di­tion­al Vul­can greet­ing of “Live long and pros­per”, with her fin­gers part­ed in the mid­dle adopt­ed from the Star Trek movie.

Shar­ing ear­ly mem­o­ries of be­ing sev­en years old and not hav­ing gone to school yet, to be­ing told that as­tron­o­my was not a vi­able ca­reer, the out­spo­ken Haque re­vealed just how pres­ti­gious the glob­al move­ment of as­tronomers is and that of the 13,000 mem­bers, less than 20 per cent are women.

Pres­i­dent Weekes con­fid­ed that her of­fice had been “stalk­ing” Haque as they mon­i­tored her work in the field and hoped to fea­ture her in a forth­com­ing ini­tia­tive to high­light the work of women in sci­ence.

A se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, the In­di­an-born Haque mi­grat­ed to Trinidad with her par­ents as a young child. She re­count­ed her first ex­pe­ri­ence of as­tron­o­my as she looked at the moon through her fa­ther’s binoc­u­lars in her vil­lage in In­dia.

Haque laud­ed the virtues of sci­ence and the ben­e­fits that could be re­alised from en­cour­ag­ing women and girls to pur­sue it as a ca­reer.

In an in­ter­view ahead of re­ceiv­ing her award last week, she de­scribed her se­lec­tion as an emo­tion­al and hum­bling ex­pe­ri­ence and ad­mit­ted it has al­ways been tough for women in sci­ence,

How­ev­er, she ex­pressed hope and op­ti­mism that it is an area which is grow­ing as the Caribbean is show­ing great promise with girls are do­ing bet­ter in sci­ence.

In 2018, Haque be­came the first woman to be award­ed the pres­ti­gious Cari­com Sci­ence Award.

An in­spir­ing teacher and re­searcher in the cut­ting-edge field of as­tro­bi­ol­o­gy, she has al­so pi­o­neered work on the Pitch Lake at La Brea and the mud vol­ca­noes in Trinidad that is recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She was fea­tured on BBC’s Sci­ence in Ac­tion pro­gramme in 2008 for her work in As­tro­bi­ol­o­gy at the Pitch Lake, and ac­tive­ly col­lab­o­rates with as­tro­bi­ol­o­gists in Fin­land, Ger­many and the Unit­ed States.

Haque start­ed an ob­ser­va­tion­al as­tron­o­my pro­gramme at St Au­gus­tine in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turku in Fin­land, and its suc­cess has brought more in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to UWI with the con­tri­bu­tion of da­ta to the mon­i­tor­ing of a mon­strous bi­na­ry black hole sys­tem and the first comet lan­der mis­sion.

An­drew Sab­ga, Chair­man of the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion, high­light­ed the strides women had made pro­fes­sion­al­ly in sci­ence as he not­ed four women had been award­ed No­bel prizes this year, with three in sci­ence.

He said: “We are very ex­cit­ed that Dr Haque is part of this wave of women in sci­ence. We at ANSA McAL will do every­thing in our pow­er to en­cour­age the in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion of women and girls in sci­ence.”

The cer­e­mo­ny was one of four held in dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion over the last month for the dif­fer­ent lau­re­ates.

In Ja­maica, Dr Olivene Burke, a so­cial sci­en­tist and ac­tivist was pre­sent­ed with the Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions prize; while in St Lu­cia, sculp­tor Jal­lim Eu­dovic was pre­sent­ed with the Arts & Let­ters prize; and in Guyana, en­tre­pre­neur An­drew Mendes was pre­sent­ed with the En­tre­pre­neur­ship prize.

All pre­sen­ta­tions were made by heads of state and gov­ern­ment of the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries.

The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence is the first re­gion­al prize to be award­ed an­nu­al­ly in sci­ence, art, civic ac­tivism, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

It orig­i­nat­ed in Trinidad & To­ba­go in 2005 and was the brain­child of the late Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga. It has made awards to more than 40 ex­cep­tion­al Caribbean peo­ple over the last 15 years.