The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has com­mit­ted $10 mil­lion to fund re­search at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the 2024 Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal’s Re­search Awards and Con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie An­toine, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal of UWI St. Au­gus­tine, wel­comed the fund­ing and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D) for both na­tion­al and re­gion­al progress.

“We know that the lead­ing coun­tries around the world have demon­strat­ed the val­ue of in­vest­ing in re­search and de­vel­op­ment, which fu­els cre­ativ­i­ty, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” said Pro­fes­sor An­toine. “Rel­e­vant re­search pro­pels so­ci­ety for­ward. The per­cent­age of GDP in­vest­ed in re­search and de­vel­op­ment is key. The most suc­cess­ful coun­tries in the world un­der­stand this for­mu­la and in­vest in R&D—South Ko­rea in­vests as much as 5.21%, and Chi­na and the USA are the high­est spenders in terms of dol­lars. Sim­i­lar­ly, with pri­vate com­pa­nies, there is a di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween the amount spent on RDI and suc­cess—Ama­zon, Ap­ple, and Huawei are list­ed in the top 5.”

She al­so stressed the need to look be­yond tra­di­tion­al sec­tors. “We must move away from the se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket of an over­ly em­pha­sised re­tail sec­tor and move more as­sertive­ly in­to in­vest­ment in re­search, de­vel­op­ment, and in­no­va­tion,” Pro­fes­sor An­toine stressed.  “We need the pri­vate sec­tor to recog­nise these op­por­tu­ni­ties for their own growth as well."

The evening al­so cel­e­brat­ed UWI’s top re­searchers. Pro­fes­sor Adesh Ram­sub­hag, De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences, and Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein, De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, re­ceived the Prin­ci­pal’s Award for Best Re­searcher.  Pro­fes­sor Ram­sub­hag was recog­nised for his pi­o­neer­ing work in mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy and biotech­nol­o­gy, while Pro­fes­sor Ho­sein was com­mend­ed for his eco­nom­ic re­search, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Caribbean de­vel­op­ment and dis­as­ter re­silience.

Oth­er Awards 

Prin­ci­pal’s Spe­cial In­no­va­tion Award

- Nis­han Ram­per­sad – *Hu­man Re­sources Pro­mo­tion Track­ing So­lu­tion* 

**Most Out­stand­ing Fac­ul­ty Re­searchers** 

- Michelle My­coo – Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing 

- Ronald Roop­nar­ine – Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture 

- Jerome De Lisle – Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion 

- Justin Koo – Fac­ul­ty of Law 

- Shas­tri Moti­lal – Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences 

For the full list of awardees and more de­tails, vis­it [UWI Re­search Awards](https://sta.uwi.edu/re­searchawards/).