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"[My] love and hope lie in the
potential of the Caribbean's botanical biodiversity to provide
substances from nature that will benefit mankind."
Dr Basil Burke
Dr Basil Burke has spent most of his
professional life in research. He is highly respected for
his expertise in and contribution to natural products chemistry,
technology and teaching in Jamaica and the United States.
Basil Burke was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica
on 12th November, 1943. He attended St. Aloysius Boys'
School and Greenwich Town Primary. While he was at St.
George's College, his father passed away but he excelled, guided
by his mother. He was Vice President of the Science
Society of St. George's College and captain of the cricket team.
When he entered Form Six, he became the college's first student
teaching assistant, assisting Father Lawrence O'Toole in
teaching chemistry.
At The University of the West Indies (UWI) in
Mona, Jamaica, Burke excelled academically and was active in
campus life. He graduated in chemistry with honours and
pursued his doctorate under Professor Wilfred Chan. In
1970, he married Hortense Guthrie, and together they departed
for Canada. Burke taught at the University of British
Columbia and experimented on P310, a substance believed to help
fungi survive and grow in the dark. This information had
implications important to agriculture in places with little
sunlight.
In 1972, Burke returned to Jamaica where he
lectured in the chemistry department at UWI, Mona. Over
the next decade, he introduced advanced technology, isolated
and analysed new natural products. His findings added to
the scientific understanding of Caribbean plants, including
various pepper and citrus plants. He became a Senior Fulbright Fellow to Stanford University and was also awarded
the Jamaica Centennial Medal.
In 1982, Dr Burke joined Plant Cell Research
Institute in California, where he directed and pioneered new
research technologies and chemical discoveries with potential
uses in medicine and agriculture. Among these were
patented natural glucolipids, which repel insects on crops.
 His
team modified the characteristics of a number of crops, among
them high solids tomatoes to make them easier to transport, and
high sulphur protein soybeans and canola to make the
constituents more nutritious as animal feed. He also
spearheaded research leading to discoveries in allelopathy.
In 1991, Dr Burke became President and Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of Plant Research Technologies.
Under his seven-year leadership, the company underwent
significant improvements servicing the pharmaceutical and
agrochemical industries. He co-founded Clinimetrics
Biomedical, a division of Clinimetrics Research Associates.
He later became Vice President of Theranos, a company that
develops tools to evaluate patients' ailments at home and
transmit the results to doctors electronically.
Dr Burke retains close ties to the Caribbean,
is an active member of the Caribbean diaspora in North America,
and most recently, became CEO of UWI Consulting, a spin-off of
UWI dedicated to harnessing its intellectual potential to serve
the region. He advises the scientists of tomorrow that,
"The coin of life has two sides - adversity and achievement -
yet its value is not diminished by which side is currently
facing up."
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