UWI St Augustine’s own Dr Shirin Haque – astronomer, senior lecturer, former deputy dean and former Head of the Department of Physics – has been named as one of the four Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence Laureates in 2020. Along with Dr Olivene Burke, Executive Director of UWI Mona Social Service in Jamaica, she represents the University’s success in academics, outreach and development.
The Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards seeks out and rewards outstanding nominees in Arts and Letters, Public and Civic Contributions, Science and Technology, and Entrepreneurship. From the 43 award recipients since its inception in 2005, just under half are from The UWI.
Dr Haque has pushed the boundaries of science not only with her work in physics and as an inspiring teacher, but also in the new and evolving field of astrobiology. In 2018, she was the first woman to be awarded the CARICOM Science Award, and now she is blazing new trails in physics, astronomy, and astrobiology. She’s also studying Psychology!
UWI Today had an opportunity to speak with Dr Haque on her recent achievements and the most exciting places her journey has taken her.
UT: You've studied and worked on a wide range of projects. Could you tell me a little bit about astrobiology and how you got into it?
SH: John Lennon said it best, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans!”
I was meant to do theoretical astronomy and data analysis (what my MPhil and PhD projects were about). But after returning from the University of Virginia, where I was doing my PhD split site, I got involved in a project with the University of Turku in Finland and set up one of the first research observatories in the English-speaking Caribbean involved in the monitoring of the quasar OJ 287 – a binary black hole system. Several years later, astrobiology became a hot topic in the world of astronomy – the search to understand the origin and proliferation of life in the Universe. The key is the detection of methane, which is typically a biosignature, meaning if methane can be detected on a planet, there could be microbial life there.There are two natural geophysical resources in Trinidad which emit methane – mud volcanoes and the pitch lake. While methane was detected in the atmosphere of Mars and on Titan (Saturn’s largest moon), humans could not get samples from these distant locations. So, we use sites on planet earth and study them as analogues for the presence of extremophiles (microbial life existing in extreme environments). The mud volcanoes became an analogue for Mars, which has similar features, and the pitch lake for Titan, which has huge hydrocarbon lakes on its surface like our pitch hydrocarbon lake in La Brea. These projects found a home in Trinidad for astrobiology and gained international attention with some of the findings, in top international journals like Science (we are co-authors on). We have international collaboration with Germany, Finland and the USA on these projects.
UT: What would you say your most rewarding experience as a teacher has been?
SH: I start my “Introduction to Astronomy” course, with “Warning: This course can be addictive.” Students are suspicious of my claim, but towards the end, many report to me that astronomy became the course which helped them deal with pressure from other courses! When I see curiosity piqued and eyes full of wonder while teaching, it’s what energises me in turn.
Some of the most rewarding experiences have been to see students, many of them young women, with serious challenges complete their programme and graduate when provided a little extra support, assistance and mentorship. Those moments make it all worth it.
UT: What is one weird fact about astronomy or physics that people might not think about?
SH: How many great discoveries happened accidentally! For example, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation was made by two engineers, Penzias and Wilson, working on a horn antenna at the Bell laboratories and there was this constant noise in their equipment they could not account for or get rid of. It turned out to be a predicted leftover radiation from the Big Bang, which was such a huge discovery that they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for it. Unexpected things can lead to great things at times!
UT: You have helped to make incredible leaps for women in scientific fields. What is the next frontier that we still have to work towards when it comes to women in science in the Caribbean?
SH: The Caribbean enjoys an excellent representation of women in the field of science when compared with most of the developed world! In my personal experience as a woman in science I was never treated any differently because of my gender. There is equal opportunity for progression and growth. I was expected to tote heavy equipment in the field right alongside men. I have fallen headlong into a mud volcano and been ravaged by thousands of killer-sized mosquitos in the forests while sampling! However, we would like to see more women in science at higher echelons and continuing to shatter the glass ceiling.
UT: You said in an interview that you try to support and nurture the crazy dreams of your students. What was your craziest dream during your career?
SH: When I was young, everyone thought wanting to be an astronomer in the Caribbean was crazy and irrelevant. So that’s certainly one dream I was lucky to fulfil. That inspired my TedX talk “On the importance of being irrelevant.” Later in my career, it would be the dream to go into psychology having been fully established in astronomy. Again, it seemed irrelevant and was very challenging as I served as Head of Department during that period as well. But it was my escape from the vagaries of life! I am currently seriously toying with the idea of a degree in neuroscience, but am satisfied with online certification in neuroscience courses... for now!
I also wanted to be a science journalist and do documentaries as well growing up, and I have been lucky to produce science magazines, documentaries and series on television. It’s an amazing Universe that is ours for discovering! This is why it is very humbling to spend your life doing what you love and be the recipient of an award like the Anthony Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence.
