Professor Delgoda, Director of the Natural Products Institute (UWI) has been recognized by the Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence for her contruibutuon to Science & Technology.
"Under her leadership and strategic direction the NPI grew from a concept to a full fledged dedicated research institution with graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and full-time researchers. Her vision and assiduous work played an instrumental role in the establishment and expansion of NPI’s laboratory facilities and she has steered it to become a highly successful collaborative research entity dedicated to the development of natural products"
Read the article on the Seeding Labs website.
Read the full article on the Jamaica Observer website.
Apart from being a favourite Caribbean fruit treat, a recent interdisciplinary study from a UWI team of scientists and international collaborators published in the highly respected journal Scientific Reports points out that there are potentially beneficial medicinal properties of the guinep.
Kingston, Jamaica. Wednesday, June 24, 2020. In an article just released in the journal Nature Plants, twenty-nine experts from around the world question the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research in ethnobiology, a key discipline for biological and cultural conservation around the world. The pandemic triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is shaking our world, and ethnobiological research - the authors conclude - is not excluded from its impacts.
Among the authors are Dr David Picking and Professor Rupika Delgoda from the Natural Products Institute (NPI) in the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), UWI Mona campus.
In their viewpoint article the researchers point to several issues: How will the pandemic affect indigenous communities, their traditional knowledge, their subsistence or the management of natural resources? And how will the global crisis affect interactions between researchers and local communities? They suggest that “given the role of ethnobiology in the conservation, sustainability and ethical use of bio-cultural diversity, the answers to these questions will be crucial".
Dr. Picking and Professor Delgoda note that the questions posed in the article are particularly significant for the Caribbean which faces health and food security threats and environmental degradation in the context of both COVID-19 resilience and climate change.
Ethnobiology is devoted to the study of past and present relationships between humans, cultures, and the biophysical environment, with a focus on knowledge, cognition and the traditional use of plants and animals. Transdisciplinary in nature, ethnobiology is also a field-based enterprise: researchers explore different biological and cultural landscapes around the world and interact with local and indigenous communities and their ecosystems.
The article was coordinated by Dr Ina Vandebroek of The New York Botanical Garden (USA) and can be accessed at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0691-6.pdf
With equipment from Instrumental Access, talented scientists in Jamaica have accelerated their efforts to control disease-spreading mosquitoes
There are no vaccines for mosquito-borne viruses like Zika, chikungunya, and dengue. When an epidemic of just one of these illnesses strikes Jamaica, it can sicken thousands at a time.
Insecticides have been deployed by the government as the main prevention tactic for decades. But in recent years, mosquitoes have begun to fight back.
Across Jamaica, they are evading efforts to reduce their population by developing resistance to the most commonly used insecticides.
Their clever defense has renewed the urgent quest for new, effective methods of eliminating mosquitoes.
Dr. Rupika Delgoda, head of the Natural Products Institute (NPI) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, believes that a solution lies within Jamaica's diverse ecosystem.
Dr. Delgoda has innovative ideas to examine indigenous plants and natural products found on land, in the sea, and even in microbial sources. The NPI has talented scientists eager to tackle the problem. Read more!
Source: Seeding Labs
Our 7 faculties and 12 professional schools offer more than 200 programmes to some 18,000 graduate, undergraduate and continuing studies students.
The UWI, Mona ranks first in Jamaica among accredited tertiary-level programmes. In 2012, the University was again one of Jamaica’s Top 100 Employers.
