A graduation award ceremony honoring graduands of The University of the West Indies, recognized for their contributions to several areas including Sport, Culture, Law, Business, and Science and more.
Date: Thursday-Saturday, 27-29 October 2022
Watch the event recording:
The University of the West Indies (The UWI) welcomed 16 outstanding global citizens to its graduation stage this year. In keeping with annual tradition across the five campuses, the University Council has approved conferral of the 16 at The UWI’s 2022 Graduation Ceremonies. The honorary graduands, recognized for their contributions to several areas including Sport, Culture, Law, Business, and Science. This year’s honorary graduands joined the ranks of a prestigious list of fewer than 500 persons who have been awarded since 1965.
Among 16 outstanding Caribbean nationals is Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted:
In 1971, Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted graduated from The UWI’s Faculty of Agriculture with a BSc (Hons) in Tropical Agriculture. Today, she is a world acclaimed Agriculture, Food and Nutrition scientist and serves as Global Lead, Nutrition and Public Health at WorldFish, One CGIAR.
Throughout her research career, Haraksingh Thilsted was the first to examine the nutritional composition of native small fish species commonly consumed in Bangladesh and Cambodia. She found connections between the high levels of multiple essential micronutrients and fatty acids present and life-changing benefits for maternal health and children’s cognitive development in the first 1000 days of life.
From this breakthrough, she went on to develop nutrition-sensitive approaches and innovations to food production from water and land that have improved the diets, nutrition, and health of millions across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. She has also made her expertise available to the United Nations and several of its agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Also in 2021, Haraksingh Thilsted was featured as the keynote speaker at The UWI’s Faculty of Food and Agriculture’s inaugural conference ‘Celebrating 100 Years of Agricultural Research and Innovation: Perspectives on Tropical Food and Agricultural Systems.’ She has a keen interest in collaborating with the Faculty on efforts to address the crucial food and nutrition security issues of the Caribbean region.
In 2021, Haraksingh Thilsted was awarded the prestigious World Food Prize and the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award for her groundbreaking research. Haraksingh Thilsted is widely published; from 2015 to mid-2022, her publications focusing on food systems, aquaculture, capture fisheries and nutrition amount to fifty-one.
Follow WorldFish and the hashtag #aquaticfoods to check out past conversations on Twitter.