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University honours staff for outstanding research
The Vice-Chancellor and President of USP, Professor Rajesh Chandra with the awardees.
University honours staff for outstanding research
Former USP academic, Dr T.K. Jayaraman, won the 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Research Publication.
University honours staff for outstanding research
Senior lecturer with USP’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Dr Stephen Pratt, who was also a joint winner with Dr Jayaraman for the VC’s Prize for Best Research Publication.
University honours staff for outstanding research
Mr Sunil Chand receives the 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Innovation.
The University of the South Pacific through the Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and International) announced the winners of the 2011 USP Vice-Chancellor’s prizes for various categories in research and innovation. The special awards ceremony was held at the University’s Laucala Campus in Suva on 3 December, 2012.
The research prizes, which are awarded annually, recognise excellence in research at USP and contribution to development in the Pacific region.
The three categories of the 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prizes were for: Research Leadership; Best Research Publication; and Innovation.
The 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Leadership was awarded to a senior academic from the University’s School of Economics, Professor Biman Prasad. This was in recognition of Professor Prasad’s outstanding research leadership in the region.
In presenting the award, the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and International), Professor John Bythell mentioned that Professor Prasad had produced timely publications and conducted active collaborative work with international agencies and regional organisations.
There were joint winners for the 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Research Publication. Dr Stephen Pratt, a senior lecturer with USP’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management and Dr T.K. Jayaraman, a former USP academic and now a staff of the Fiji National University, were awarded in this category.
Dr Pratt’s paper was published in the prestigious journal called Annals of Tourism Research and Dr Jayaraman’s publication was a book published with the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Both recipients expressed their delight and thanked the University for honouring them with such an award.
Dr Jayaraman said that in his research, he was fascinated by the idea of a single currency, since he was teaching monetary economics at USP.
In 2007, he wrote a paper for the Commonwealth Secretariat on economic integration for their collected volume of articles on issues in Small Developing States. That research won Dr Jayaraman the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Research Paper in 2008.
His studies on single currency focusing on the currencies in the region attracted the attention of the Commonwealth Secretariat in 2009. Dr Jayaraman was asked to write a book on monetary policy formulation and implementation in the region and the book was published last year.
“This publication has now been recognized by USP and awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Research Publication,” he said.
The 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Innovation was jointly awarded to Mr Sunil Chand, Senior Data Analyst with the University’s Planning and Quality office and Mr Edwin Singh, a former staff of the same office.
The Innovation award was in recognition of the development of the first-ever USP dashboard system which gives a solution to automating one of the University’s key systems - the access to data on real terms at the click of a button.
Besides, the Vice-Chancellor’s Prizes, outstanding academic staff were also rewarded for their high quality research outputs in 2011. This was to celebrate the achievements of researchers and to encourage more participation of staff to engage in quality and relevant research.
With USP’s vision to transform itself from being a good university to an excellent university, the Vice-Chancellor and President of USP, Professor Rajesh Chandra emphasised on the importance of research and the need for staff to publish in high quality journals.
He congratulated all the winners and said that the awards were a recognition of the hard work of the winners in publishing their research.
There was a total of 32 academic staff recognised for their published research, apart from those awarded for the Vice-Chancellor’s prizes.
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