A Bar­ba­di­an sci­en­tist has been ho­n­oured by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) as one of sev­en of the hemi­sphere’s top minds.

Dr Car­di­nal Warde was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and In­no­va­tion Award of the Amer­i­c­as dur­ing the re­cent VII Meet­ing of Min­is­ters and High-Lev­el Au­thor­i­ties of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, (RE­MYCT).

He was the on­ly Caribbean re­cip­i­ent among the dis­tin­guished sci­en­tists and re­searchers recog­nised for “their out­stand­ing body of work, but more im­por­tant­ly for their ded­i­ca­tion to na­tion build­ing by fos­ter­ing co­op­er­a­tion and part­ner­ships for de­vel­op­ment across OAS mem­ber states”.

Dr Warde, Pro­fes­sor of Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing at the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIT), Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra for Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and In­no­va­tion, and In­ter­im Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, was specif­i­cal­ly ho­n­oured for “equip­ping young sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers with tools and op­por­tu­ni­ties”.

Dr Cardinal Warde (on screen) was among seven scientists and researchers awarded the prestigious Science, Technology, and Innovation Award of the Americas. (Photo credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS.)

Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS

The oth­er awardees were: Dr Ale­jan­dro Adem of Cana­da, Pres­i­dent of the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences and En­gi­neer­ing Re­search Coun­cil of Cana­da; Dr Pablo Zamo­ra, Pres­i­dent of Fun­dación Chile; Dr Rosi­bel Ochoa of Hon­duras, As­so­ciate Vice Chan­cel­lor at UC River­side; Dr Ar­turo Reyes San­doval of Mex­i­co, Di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute; Dr Nat­acha De­Pao­la of the Unit­ed States, Pro­fes­sor of Bio­med­ical En­gi­neer­ing at the Illi­nois In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Di­rec­tor of the Illi­nois Tech Dig­i­tal Med­ical En­gi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­ter; and Dr Hen­ry Co­hen of Uruguay, Head of the De­part­ment of Gas­troen­terol­o­gy at the Hos­pi­tal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Re­pub­lic, and Di­rec­tor of the ECHO Project.

The OAS said that from rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing health­care to ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and em­pow­er­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists, the ho­n­ourees have been re­shap­ing the Amer­i­c­as.

In her con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage, OAS Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary for In­te­gral De­vel­op­ment, Kim Os­borne, spoke of the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing the con­tri­bu­tions from the Amer­i­c­as to glob­al sci­ence and in­no­va­tion does not go un­no­ticed.

“Each of you in your own way have made your mark on the world of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and in­no­va­tion. To­day the OAS sim­ply wants to say thank you for en­rich­ing our work with your time and ex­per­tise,” she said.

The OAS Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Awards, es­tab­lished in 1972 as the “Bernar­do Hous­say Award”, ho­n­our the lega­cy of the es­teemed Ar­gen­tine No­bel lau­re­ate whose work on di­a­betes trans­formed glob­al health. Since then, the award has cel­e­brat­ed out­stand­ing achieve­ments in fields like Bi­o­log­i­cal Sci­ences, Physics, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics, and Ap­plied Tech­no­log­i­cal Re­search. —WASH­ING­TON (CMC)