Four T&T na­tion­als are among six peo­ple who will be con­ferred with hon­orary doc­tor­ates at the 2013 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, in Oc­to­ber.

For­mer Bish­op, Rev Clive Ab­du­lah, will be con­ferred with the Hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws (LLD) de­gree; re­search sci­en­tists Dr Theo­do­sius Ming Whi Poon-King and Dr El­isha Tikas­ingh will be con­ferred with Hon­orary Doc­tor of Sci­ences (DSc) de­grees and Trinida­di­an jour­nal­ist Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown will be con­ferred with an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters (Dlitt) de­gree, the uni­ver­si­ty has said in a press re­lease.The re­lease said the four were be­ing ho­n­oured for their stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T and the wider Caribbean.Ab­du­lah was the first na­tion­al to be elect­ed Bish­op of T&T, a po­si­tion in which he served for 23 years (1970-1993). He was al­so a found­ing mem­ber of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T and its sec­ond pres­i­dent.

He is al­so still the first and on­ly bish­op to have served as a mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil of UWI from 1971-1975 and is the first West In­di­an bish­op to serve on the board of di­rec­tors of the An­gli­can Cen­tre in Rome (1992-1995).For his con­tri­bu­tions, Ab­du­lah, who con­tin­ues to serve the dio­cese of T&T, was the re­cip­i­ent of the Hum­ming Bird Gold Medal and, in 2013, re­ceived the Cadet Corps Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer's Award.Poon-King has made tremen­dous and in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to med­ical re­search in ar­eas such as di­a­betes, acute rheumat­ic fever, paraquat poi­son­ing and scor­pi­on sting my­co­cardi­tis.He was the first to re­port on a link be­tween scor­pi­on stings and my­ocardi­tis (in­flam­ma­tion of the heart mus­cle), and pub­lished the re­port in the British Med­ical Jour­nal. Dr Poon-King is al­so cred­it­ed with un­der­tak­ing the first na­tion­wide sur­vey of di­a­betes in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1961.

Tikas­ingh has al­so made ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions to sci­en­tif­ic re­search in the Caribbean re­gion and is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned for his work in en­to­mol­o­gy, par­a­sitol­ogy and vi­rol­o­gy. Up­on com­ple­tion of his aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, he joined the Trinidad Re­gion­al Virus Lab­o­ra­to­ry (TRVL) UWI, St Au­gus­tine, in 1960 as a Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion Fel­low.Dur­ing his 25-year ca­reer, he es­tab­lished the Par­a­sitol­ogy Unit at CAREC, which sub­se­quent­ly served as a ref­er­ence cen­tre to lab­o­ra­to­ries in 19 coun­tries of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean, and au­thored over 100 re­search ar­ti­cles which have been fea­tured in in­ter­na­tion­al peer-re­viewed jour­nals.Dr Tikas­ingh is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly known for the de­vel­op­ment of a tech­nique to pro­duce hy­per-im­mune as­cetic flu­ids in mice, which is used to­day as the gold stan­dard and forms the ba­sis for ar­bovirus im­muno­log­i­cal stud­ies.Sa­landy-Brown has had a dis­tin­guished ca­reer in me­dia, the arts and lit­er­a­ture. An in­ter­na­tion­al prize-win­ning pro­gramme mak­er, she has made ex­ten­sive con­tri­bu­tions to the cul­tur­al land­scapes of both T&T and the Unit­ed King­dom.

Sa­landy-Brown was a for­mer ed­i­tor of the Mel­rose Press in Lon­don, a Gov­er­nor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster and a for­mer trustee of the Koestler Awards to sup­port and fund arts in pris­ons in the UK. She al­so served as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive with the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC), where she was crit­i­cal to strate­gic pol­i­cy-mak­ing and the con­cep­tion and pro­duc­tion of ra­dio pro­grammes.The oth­er two grad­uands are Lon­don nov­el­ist/writer/lit­er­ary com­men­ta­tor Dr Lak­sh­mi Per­saud, who will be con­ferred with an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters (Dlitt) de­gree and Ja­maican pub­lish­er/en­tre­pre­neur Ian Ran­dle will be con­ferred with an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws (LLD) de­gree.A to­tal of 19 Hon­orary Grad­uands have been named by the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty. The de­grees will be con­ferred by UWI Chan­cel­lor Sir George Al­leyne at grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cis­es, be­gin­ning with the open cam­pus cer­e­mo­ny in Grena­da on Oc­to­ber 12, the Cave Hill Cam­pus cer­e­mo­ny in Bar­ba­dos on Oc­to­ber 19, the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus cer­e­mo­ny in T&T from Oc­to­ber 24 to 26 and the Mona Cam­pus cer­e­mo­ny in Ja­maica from Oc­to­ber 31 to No­vem­ber 2.