The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) participated in an international symposium to bring together scientists from around the world to the Caribbean, to explore the future of science and technology in the region, the abilities of its resident scientists, and those in diaspora.
This symposium brought together leading physicists, computer scientists, astronomers, technologists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, conservationists, and leaders to engage in events, conversations, and collaborations to imagine the future of science and technology in the Caribbean. The symposium synergized conversations, collaboration, and networking, to create new bridges and opportunities between Caribbean scientists, students, and the larger scientific community. One of the aims of the symposium has been to create a hub for relevant science, including radio astronomy, in the region with collaboration between scholars around the world and Caribbean academics—that we should all rise together.
Professor Shirin Haque, of the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, helped coordinate this meeting. Haque did her Ph.D. degree with UWI and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville under an IDB fellowship, and has been a longtime collaborator with NRAO. UWI and NRAO work together to share programs providing access and training in radio astronomy to underrepresented individuals, including the Radio Astronomy Data Imaging and Analysis Lab (RADIAL) program and the NINE program. To date nine UWI undergraduates have gotten into the RADIAL program, including three this year.
The symposium was the brainchild of Trinidadian diaspora Professor Stephon Alexander of Brown University, chief strategist Everard Findlay of EIME Corp in the USA, and Professor Shirin Haque of UWI as the local chair, with the generous support from the Simons Foundation to UWI.
Learn more about this symposium here.
