Durban, South Africa, July 2, 2024 – Florida A&M University (FAMU) President Larry Robinson, Ph.D., was among several individuals recognized as 2024 Nexus International Thought Leadership Award recipients
Robinson, who holds a doctorate in nuclear chemistry and is the principal investigator of a $30 million grant at FAMU, received the Nexus Leadership Award, along with Professor Nokuthula Sibiya, acting vice-chancellor of Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT).
Robinson is the principal investigator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Coastal and Marine Ecosystems II formed in 2016 to address issues confronting marine and coastal communities and to educate the next generation of problem solvers in these areas.
Other Leadership Award recipients were Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, minister of Environment & Climate Change in Sierra Leone, and Professor Lourens Van Staden, an MUT administrator. During the 1990s, Van Staden was a post-doctoral fellow at FAMU under a program sponsored by the U.S Agency for International Development.
During the ceremony, three individuals were presented the Nexus Accelerated Innovation Award.
Zwanani Titus Mathe, Ph.D., chief executive officer of South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI), Sicelo Xulu, managing director and chair of the Board of SANEDI and an alumnus of MUT, and Lisa Williams, Corporate Contract Labor Strategy director at Dow, received the Nexus Accelerated Innovation Award.
The Award Ceremony culminated the first full day of speeches, workshops and presenations of the 2024 EnergyWaterFoodClimate Summit.
“The award is a recognition based on the recipients’ activities supporting the nexus science enterprise of advancing a trained workforce for sustainable outcomes in the energy, water, food, and climate systems,” said FAMU School of the Environment Dean Victor Ibeanusi, Ph.D., founder of the Nexus Energy, Water, Food and Climate Summit.
The focus of the four-day summit, co-hosted by MUT, is to expand the research frontier for new discoveries that integrate systems-based research and education to find solutions to the vexing environmental challenges.