Dr Oludayo Tade, a renowned Criminologist and Sociologist in the Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan, has won the 2021 Science Communication Award.
This was disclosed in a statement made available to newsmen on Wednesday in Ibadan.
The statement stated that the award was presented by the Conversation Africa, a research-based communication outfit based in South Africa.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 2021 award is the Conversation Africa’s second Annual West Africa Science Communication Awards.
It is an event where researchers and partner universities are awarded based on the number of contributions, as well as readership generated by their researches
Tade, who had won the inaugural award in 2020 for making the highest contributions on science communications also retained the same position in 2021.
In the statement, Adejuwon Soyinka, the West Africa Regional Editor of Conversation Africa, said that the organisation was already in partnership with 73 institutions.
According to Soyinka, the organisation had embarked on training toward ensuring that research findings were communicated to policy actors and non-academic audiences to impact society beyond the academic community.
He noted that the news is a not for profit initiative serving universities and the research sector in Africa.
“Our mission is to mainstream the voices of scientists and support science communication activities.
“We do this by working with academics and researchers, who themselves write and provide fact/evidence/research-based analytical articles on various societal issues and articles about their research findings as well.”
Soyinka added that the organisation’s editors then edit and publish these short articles of +/- 800 words, to ensure that the articles were easily understood by the general public.
“Our objective is to make the knowledge produced in the academy accessible, easy to understand and freely available for the public,” Soyinka said.
Feyisitan Ijimakinwa and Janet Ogundairo won the most read article from the University of Ibadan.
Dr Lanre Ikuteyijo and Dr Akin Akinyemi of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Osun, were awarded with the most contribution and most-read piece respectively.
The statement added that scholars from the University of Lagos, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, University of Ghana Legon and University of Capecoast also won awards
NAN reports that the award covered entries made from Nov. 1, 2020 to Oct. 31, 2021.