New­ly named Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Lau­re­ate, Dr Niv­en Narain, has pledged to use his US$35,000 cash prize from the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards for Caribbean Ex­cel­lence to es­tab­lish a foun­da­tion fo­cused on women’s health in Guyana and the Unit­ed States.

Narain made the an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day night while ac­cept­ing his award at the cer­e­mo­ny in George­town, Guyana.

The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­vel­op­er, who serves as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Boston-based BPG­bio, said the ini­tia­tive was in­spired by the loss of his grand­moth­er to can­cer.

“Tonight, I ho­n­our my grand­moth­er,” Narain said. “In tak­ing the funds re­ceived from this award, to start the Rukhminia Latch­man Foun­da­tion for Women’s Health.”

He said the foun­da­tion would op­er­ate in George­town and Mi­a­mi, with its first project de­liv­er­ing health­care di­rect­ly to women through mo­bile med­ical units.

“Our first ini­tia­tive is go­ing to be Women’s Health on Wheels, which brings mo­bile med­ical ser­vices di­rect­ly to work­ing moth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle moth­ers,” he said.

The an­nounce­ment drew an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from Pa­tron of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards and Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man of the ANSA McAL Group, A Nor­man Sab­ga.

“I will match your do­na­tion in the cre­ation of this foun­da­tion,” Sab­ga told Narain. “And we look for­ward to see­ing it grow­ing and grow­ing.”

Narain re­ceived the Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy award for his work on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to de­vel­op tar­get­ed phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals that could im­prove treat­ment out­comes and trans­form lives glob­al­ly.

The Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy award was shared with Ja­maican cli­mate sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Tan­necia Stephen­son.

Oth­er awardees were Bar­ba­di­an vi­su­al artist Sheena Rose, who re­ceived the Arts and Let­ters award; Ja­maican telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions en­tre­pre­neur Dean Nev­ers, who was recog­nised in En­tre­pre­neur­ship; and Bar­ba­di­an so­cial ac­tivist Shamelle Rice, who re­ceived the award for Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions.

Each cat­e­go­ry win­ner re­ceives the lo­cal cur­ren­cy equiv­a­lent of TT$500,000. The Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy award was di­vid­ed be­tween Narain and Stephen­son.

The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards for Caribbean Ex­cel­lence are ad­min­is­tered by the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion, the phil­an­thropic arm of the ANSA McAL Group.

Es­tab­lished in 1993, the foun­da­tion sup­ports projects and ini­tia­tives of na­tion­al and re­gion­al sig­nif­i­cance through­out the Caribbean.