Close Menu

FST Congratulates Professor Emerita Helen Jacobs

The University of the West Indies (The UWI) recently approved the recommendation to confer the title of ‘Emerita’ on Professor of Organic Chemistry, Helen Jacobs.

Professor Helen Jacobs served The UWI for 32 years before retiring in 2019. She taught organic chemistry at all levels of the undergraduate and graduate programmes in the Department of Chemistry at Mona, contributing significantly to both curriculum development and reform. She served as organic chemistry section head, departmental coordinator for graduate studies and for examinations and Head of Department (2010-2014). She was also for a period the academic representative on the Campus Appointments Committee. Professor Jacobs maintained a robust research programme centred on natural products from the endemic flora of Jamaica resulting in the discovery of several novel structures, some of unprecedented skeletal type, and forming the basis of 50 publications and 17 advanced research degrees at Mona (8 Ph.D. and 9 M. Phil.). Her students have subsequently gone on to obtain prestigious fellowships and gain admission to challenging international programmes, with many now occupying senior positions in industry and academia. Professor Jacobs has provided professional and public service as a representative from Latin America and the Caribbean on the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (the technical subcommittee to the Stockholm Convention), as a peer reviewer for a number of scientific journals, and as an external assessor in promotion processes.


Her accomplishments were recognized by The UWI with the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence (Research Accomplishments, 2006), and nationally with the Gleaner Honour Award for Science and Technology (2007) and the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica (2009).


Congratulations Professor Jacobs.

Published on 01 Sep, 2020

Top of Page