Paula Tennant is a Senior Lecturer working with virus diseases of fruit and vegetable crops at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. She completed undergraduate studies in Botany and Biochemistry at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and postgraduate studies in Molecular Plant Pathology at Cornell University. This was followed by postdoctoral research at Cornell and the Biotechnology Centre, the University of the West Indies, Mona. In 2000, she joined the Department of Life
Sciences. Maintaining ties with the Biotechnology Centre, she has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, technical articles, and books on virus diseases related to her research and actively teaches undergraduate courses in Virology and Biotechnology.
Sephra Rampersad is a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of The West Indies. She holds a BSc. and PhD in Biochemistry and has several post-doctoral trainings from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and The Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, France. Her research interests include the application of molecular ecology tools for studying population genetics and genetic diversity.
Angela Alleyne is a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados. She is also the Program Coordinator of the M.Sc./Diploma in Biosafety at the UWI. She completed undergraduate studies in Biochemistry with Microbiology at the UWI Mona Campus, Jamaica, and postgraduate studies in 2000 at the UWI Cave Hill Campus, where she studied the molecular biology of yam anthracnose disease, a fungal disease in the Dioscorea (yam) species, in Barbados. This was followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Nebraskan Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in plant pathology and a period as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2008, she returned to Cave Hill, where her current research involves the use of molecular markers in plant disease diagnosis.
Lloyd Johnson is a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Marshall Team at the Toronto Metropolitan University. He is an alumnus of the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, completing both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Botany. His current research focuses on the assay development for disease detection, inclusive of SARS-CoV-2. He is a recipient of the 2022 Dean’s Research Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund through the Science Research and Innovation Office at TMU. He enjoys innovative interdisciplinary collaborations that facilitate the sharing of experiences and expertise.
Icolyn Amarakoon is a Lecturer at The University of the West Indies (UWI) in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences whose current research includes viral infections and the molecular biology of prostate cancer in the Caribbean. She earned a Ph.D. in Biotechnology through a split-site Doctoral Commonwealth Scholarship Program between The UWI and the John Innes Center in Norwich, England, and later received a Fulbright Scholarship to characterize HIV at the University of Maryland, Institute of Human Virology.
Marcia Roye is the Director for Graduate Studies and Research, UWI Mona campus. She has for years sought to build the research capacity at the UWI in the area of molecular virology, resulting in more than 30 peer-reviewed publications. She is a recipient of the Fulbright and UNESCO-L’Oreal fellowships. She is actively involved in the academic counseling of undergraduates and prospective graduate students.
