UNILAG VC wins €38,000 global biodiversity information grant

Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), has won a €38,000 Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) grant.

In a statement on Saturday, in Lagos, Nonye Oguama, principal assistant registrar, corporate affairs of the institution, said the awards are part of the 2021 Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) programme funded by the European Union (EU).

Ogundipe, a professor of botany, won the national level grant for his project proposal “Implementation of the Biodiversity Information and Data System for Coastal Ecosystem in Nigeria”.

Another lecturer of UNILAG, Temitope Onuminya, a botanist, was also named among the winners of the grant.

Onuminya won an institutional level grant of €18,850 for implementation of a BID project proposal titled “Expanding the Visibility of the Lagos Herbarium through Digitisation and Mobilisation of Plant Specimen Data”.

”The University of Lagos (UNILAG) is rejoicing with them (mentor and mentee) and wishes them successful implementation of their proposals,” Oguama said.

The GBIF, an international organisation with secretariat in Copenhagen, Denmark, focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available through the internet.

It provides human resources and technical infrastructure enabling publication of and access to large volumes of data gathered over centuries about the earth’s species.