SPISE a success

The next generation of Caribbean science and engineering leaders are being groomed by the Student Programme for Innovation in Science and Engineering (SPISE).

Recently, the Caribbean Science Foundation (CSF) – facilitator of SPISE – culminated the 2017 programme which saw its largest class yet – 24 students – presenting their underwater robotics, renewable energy, computer programming and entrepreneurship projects to an enthusiastic audience of sponsors, instructors, colleagues, friends and family.

This year, SPISE was once again held at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus, welcoming students ages 16 to 18 years from 13 countries.

Professor Cardinal Warde, Interim Executive Director of the CSF noted that the students involved in its flagship project are among the best in the Caribbean region.

“We try to narrow the pool of applicants because we generally tell students if medicine is their primary interest, and if they are sure they want to becomea doctor, this is not the programme for them…This programme is geared towards creating and grooming more science and engineering graduates.”

“We are interested in jobs for the Caribbean; jobs for our people, and engineers and scientists create more jobs... Yes, being a doctor and lawyer are great professions, but a lot of our people go into those professions and in some ways, we are sort of oversubscribed. But we are very much undersubscribed in engineering and that is why this programme exists,” he said.

Dr Dinah Sah, Co-Executive Director at CSF and SPISE Director pointed out that of the 109 SPISE graduates, many have gone on to the world’s top universities.

“This September, we will have four former SPISE students at MIT, the largest number at any single University. We are tremendously grateful to our sponsors and supporters, without whom this programme would not have been possible.”

The successful four-week session was taught by SPISE instructors comprising of academic and industry professionals from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, and faculty from UWI. In addition, career seminars from success professionals ranged from biotechnology and biomedical engineering to computational biology, optics and economics.