Simone Badal McCreath

Simone Badal, a young academic at the UWI, Mona campus was born in Kingston Jamaica to parents, Lloyd Badal and Elsa Ramsay. She studied at the Medowbrook high school where she went on to the UWI and majored in Biochemistry and Chemistry, acquiring a BSc. (hons), MPhil and PhD. She also acquired a MBA at the University of Wales, Warwick. Her PhD research focus at the UWI, Mona was on the anticancer and chemopreventive potential of Jamaican natural products. She is however keen on ensuring that bioactive natural products are researched using a personalized framework, hence her current research, developing novel cancer cell lines from Jamaica. She has been the recipient of the internationally acclaimed award, Elsevier Early Career Women Scientist in Chemical Sciences in 2014, representing the Latin America and Caribbean region, 1 of 5 prizes awarded globally. Passionate about giving back, she founded the anticancer research Jamaica (ACRJ) Foundation (www.acrjfoundation.org.jm) which is geared to helping high school dropouts in Jamaica and in the future, the region.