General Notices

From November 26 to 28, 2025, the St Augustine Campus hosted this year’s Principal’s Research Awards and Research Festival, held under the theme Research Innovation for Present and Future. The theme reflects how our researchers are responding to today’s needs while helping to shape the region’s future.

At the Principal’s Research Awards ceremony, honours were presented across thirteen categories, recognising outstanding work from our faculties, institutes and centres. Across the three days of the Festival, that research was brought to life through faculty booths, live demonstrations, seminars and the Oral and Poster Presentations, which highlighted the strength and creativity of our student and staff researchers.

Principal’s Research Awards 2025

Principal’s Award for Best Researcher

Professor Michelle Mycoo

For research in Climate Change & Urban Planning for Sustainable Development 

Department of Geomatics Engineering & Land Management

Faculty of Engineering

Professor Rohanie Maharaj

For research in Food Quality and Safety, Postharvest Technology and Development of Sustainable Materials

Department of Chemical Engineering

Faculty of Engineering

Principal’s Award for Most Impactful Community Research

Dr. Ben Braithwaite

Project: Deaf Caribbean Academic Network Research

Department of Modern

Languages and Linguistics

Faculty of Humanities and Education

Special Recognition for Most Impactful Community Research

Dr. Kenneth Charles

Project: Action Research to Introduce Community Voluntary Non-Renumerated Blood Donation

Paraclinical Sciences

Faculty of Medical Sciences 

Prof. Pathmanathan Umaharan and CRC Team

Project:  Cocoa, Carbon, Community Impact Investment Research Project

Cocoa Research Centre

Most Productive Research Department Award

Department of Life Sciences

Head of the Department – Dr Mike Oatham/Dr. Azad Mohammed

Faculty of Science and Technology 

Department of Food Production

Head of the Department – Dr. Wendy Ann Isaac

Faculty of Food and Agriculture

Most Productive Research Institute, Centre or Unit Award

SALISES

Director - Dr. Sandra Sookram

Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies

Most Promising Early Career Researcher Award

Dr. Kegan Jones

Lecturer

School of Veterinary Medicine

Faculty of Medical Sciences

Most Outstanding Graduate Researcher & Mentorship Award

Graduate Student: Dr. Sunshine De Caries 

Supervisor: Professor Mark Wuddivira

Thesis: Modelling Spatial and Temporal Trends of Soil Quality in Small Island Tropical Watersheds for Climate Change Resilience

Faculty of Food and Agriculture

Graduate Student: Dr Nirmala Ramnarine  

Supervisor: Professor Jerome De Lisle

Thesis: Validating Interpretations and uses of School Based Assessment in CSEC Public Examinations

 Faculty of Humanities and Education

Most Outstanding Faculty Researchers

Professor Festus Olutoge

Faculty of Engineering

Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Oral Daley

Lecturer 

Faculty of Food and Agriculture

Department of Food Production

Dr. Nicole Roberts

Lecturer

Faculty of Humanities and Education

Centre for Language Learning

Dr. Alicia Elias-Roberts

Senior Lecturer

Faculty of Law

Dr. Raveed Khan

Lecturer

Faculty of Medical Sciences

Department of Para-clinical Sciences

Dr. Amy Deacon

Senior Lecturer

Faculty of Science and Technology

Department of Life Sciences 

Dr. Henry Bailey

Senior Lecturer

Faculty of Social Sciences

Department of Economics 

Most Outstanding Researcher of the Centre/Institute/Unit – Joint Award

Dr. Bephyer Parey 

Research Fellow

Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies

Dr. Letetia Addison

Project Officer & Researcher

University Office of Planning 

Hurricane and Earthquake Alleviation Research (HEAR) Award - Joint Award

Barataria Community Council - Ms June Rogers

Project: Barataria Climate-Smart Hydroponic Edible Landscape Initiative: A Community-Led Model for Hurricane-Resilient Urban Food Security

Barataria Community Council

Ms. Karin Hatch, Dr. Sarah Subhan, Mrs. Dionne Brewster-Phillip, Dr. Cherisse Rambarose

Project: Beyond The Waves Therapeutic Program: A Psychosocial Innovation for Health and

Climate Resilience in Post-Hurricane Caribbean Communities.

Beyond the Waves Program

Award Committee’s Selection for Special Recognition - HEAR AWARD

Dr. Omardath Maharaj

Project: Operation Food: Farmers Opting to Overcome Disaster.

Faculty of Food and Agriculture

Award Committee’s Selection for Special Recognition – Best Team Research

Mr. Stokeley Smart, Mr. Kyle Rudden,  Ms. Nadia Kangaloo, Mr. John Noel, Ms. Anysha Thomas, Ms. Tanya Carter, Resan Pakeerah, Mr. Feyaad Khan, Mr. Andy Edwards, Ms. Alisha Estrada, Mr. Robin Antoine, Mr. Colin M. Ramsay, Ms. Arianna Ali, Mr. Cyrus Lakhan, Ms. Kristal Boodram, Valsson Tobias, Chandini Gunpat, Mr. Christopher Sieuchand, Ramnarine Mungroo, Mr. Ronnie Vinda Persad, Dr. Vaalmikki Arjoon, Ms. Simone Balkissoon, Mr. Brendon Bhagwandeen, and Ms. Zara-Leigh Lewis

Project: The Smart Tables® Framework: Creating Complete Mortality Life Tables for CARICOM: The Cases of Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica and Constructing Complete Mortality Tables for the Employed Population of Trinidad and Tobago.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Faculty of Science and Technology

Award Committee’s Selection for Special Recognition - Principal’s Special Innovation Award

Dr. Gloria Ramdeen-Mootoo

Innovation: “The Angel App of Organ Donation Trinidad and Tobago”

Faculty of Medical Sciences

Principal’s Research Awards and Festival 2025

Best Oral Presentation

Theme I: Agri-Food Technology and Policy for Food and Nutrition Security

Presentation

Production and Evaluation of Innovative Buttermilk Biscuits from Orange-Flesh Sweet Potato Flour Infused with Coconut for Food and Nutrition Security

Author 

Ronnie Ramsaran and Vidya de Gannes

Theme II: Biodiversity, Climate Change and Disaster Management

Presentation

A Multidisciplinary Approach into the Temporal Evolution of Near-Surface Structures and Morphology of the Piparo Mud Volcano

Author 

Kerneese Tenille Ramjarrie, Oshaine Omar Blake, Kailas Sekhar Banerjee, Dexter Davis, Ryan Ramsook and Raffie Hosein

Theme III: Health and Well-Being: Issues and Advances 

Presentation 

From Rainforest to Laboratory Antimicrobial Peptides from Trinidadian Frog Skin Secretions as Leads against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria

Author 

Gervonne Barran, J Michael Conlon and Milena Mechkarska

Theme IV: Engineering and Green Technologies for Sustainability

Presentation 

Tuning structure and function: metal-ion induced phase transformation in copper antimony sulphide nanostructures

Author 

Kimberly Weston, Richard A. Taylor, Kim Kisslinger and Shobha Mantripragada

Theme V: Manufacturing, Trade, Tourism and Financial Well-being

Presentation 

Border Carbon Adjustments: The Potential Impact on Trinidad and Tobago’s Growth and Trade

Author 

Kester Thompson

Theme VI & VII: ICTs for Digital Islands & AI for Multidimensional Research and Development

Presentation

A Machine Learning Approach to Multi-Crop Disease Identification Using XGBoost

Author

Vijayanandh Rajamanickam, Deepak Ramsubhag and Jayaraj Jayaraman

Theme VIII: Education, Culture, Sports, Equality, Law and Governance for a Better Life and Sustainable Environment

Presentation

A fit-for-purpose land administration model to support indigenous land rights: the case of Maya communal lands in Belize

Author 

Sunil Lalloo, Charisse Griffith-Charles and Leonel Frazer.

Principal’s Research Awards and Festival 2025

Best Poster Presentation

Theme I: Agri-Food Technology and Policy For Food and Nutrition Security

Presentation

Exploring Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) Flavour Diversity in Trinidad: A Study with Caribbean Relevance

Author

Naailah Ali, Darin Sukha, David Gopaulchan, Vickeisha Lall, Krystal Daniel, Lincoln McDonald, David Salt and Pathmanathan Umaharan

Theme II: Biodiversity, Climate Change and Disaster Management

Presentation

Evaluating the effectiveness of passive acoustic monitoring at detecting anurans in Caribbean tropical forests

Author

Renoir Auguste, Amy E. Deacon and Mark F. Hulme

Theme III: Health and Well-Being: Issues and Advances 

Presentation

Cosmeceutical Potential of Ficus benjamina Seed Extracts from Trinidad: Biochemical, Mineral, and Antioxidant Profiling

Author

Muhammad Sani Ismaila, D.C. Arrindell, F. Mohammed, D. Mohammed, P. Daniel-France and V. Sundaram

Theme IV: Engineering and Green Technologies for Sustainability

Presentation

The Extraction of Cellulose from Bambusa vulgaris (Bamboo) Biowaste for the Synthesis of Useful Products for Environmental Purposes

Author

Bhanumattee Ramdhanie, Dhurjati Prasad Chakrabarti, Faisal Mohammed, Sharad Maharaj, Khadir Manwah and Oshaine Blake

Theme V: Manufacturing, Trade, Tourism and Financial Well-being

Presentation

An Empirical Assessment of CARICOM’s Intra-Industry Trade

Author

Christina Baptiste, Roger Hosein and George Saridakis

Theme VI & VII: ICTs for Digital Islands & AI for Multidimensional Research and Development

Presentation

Generative AI for business sustainability: Examining usability, usefulness, and triple bottom line impacts in small and medium enterprises 

Author

Satesh Sookhai, Priscilla Bahaw, David Forgenie and Ghulfam Sadiq

Theme VIII: Education, Culture, Sports, Equality, Law and Governance for a Better Life and Sustainable Environment

Presentation

Towards More Efficient Policing – An Application of a Novel Crime Hotspot Detection Method

Author

Navin Dookeram, Akhenaton Daaga, Asad Mohammed and Isaac Dialsingh