The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has appointed its first female Vice-Chancellor.
Professor (Mrs) Rita Akosua Dickson will take over from Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso for a four-year term, starting August 1, 2020.
Until her appointment, the Professor of Pharmacognosy was Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University, the first female to have held that position.
Prof. Rita Dickson graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from the university in 1994.
She pursued graduate studies leading to the award of MPharm in Pharmacognosy in 1999 and was appointed a lecturer the following year in the Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, KNUST.
In 2003, she was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to pursue a PhD at Kings’ College London, University of London, UK. She returned to teaching at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2007 and was promoted to a Senior Lecturer in 2009 and further to an Associate Professor in 2014.
Prof. Dickson is a Phytochemist whose work spans the areas of bioactive natural products in the management of communicable and non-communicable diseases and she had devoted time to research in natural products, with anti-infective, wound-healing, anti-inflammatory, anti-pyretic and antidiabetic properties among others; based on their ethnopharmacological usage.
By Kofi Adu Domfeh|3news.com|Ghana