Meet Dr. Sharon Lall-Ramnarine: Emphasizing Mentorship And Research

Dr. Sharon Lall-Ramnarine was born and raised in Georgetown, Guyana. She is the only child of Bansi and Etwaria (Lynette) Lall. She credits her academic success to the excellent foundation she received in her early years in Guyana and the values instilled in her by her mom – that women need the highest level of education to lead comfortable independent lives.

She graduated from St. Rose’s High School in 1989 and then attended Queen’s College High School for A’ Levels. She received her B. Sc. degree in Chemistry from the University of Guyana in 1995 and immigrated to the United States with her parents that same year. She received her M.A. in Chemistry from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1998.

In 2003 she received her M. Phil and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 2004 Dr. Lall-Ramnarine joined the department of chemistry at Queensborough Community College (QCC)of the City University of New York as an Assistant Professor. She was tenured in 2009, promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and Full Professor in 2015. She is currently a tenured Full Professor in chemistry at QCC. She serves as the director of the CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP) at QCC and is the campus coordinator of undergraduate research as a High Impact Practice. Since 2001, Dr. Lall-Ramnarine has held a collaborator appointment in the Chemistry Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). She conducts research there every summer with her research students.

Dr. Lall-Ramnarine’s research focuses on designing ionic liquids, liquid salts that are important components in advanced devices and technologies. Highlights of her collaborative research include synthesizing ionic liquids for the recycling of spent nuclear fuel and as superior electrolytes in batteries, supercapacitors and solar cells. Dr. Lall-Ramnarine has published twenty-three papers on her research, in numerous peer reviewed journals and has received twenty-eight research grants to fund her work. Her publications have received over 260 citations and 760 reads from fellow researchers to date. She has given 31 research presentations (including invited presentations) at local, national and international conferences and co-authored over 200 presentations with her research mentees. She has also served as a reviewer for scientific journals, General Chemistry textbooks and National Science Foundation grants.

Dr. Lall-Ramnarine has co-organized several research conferences. She has been Co-Chair/committee member of the student member committee of the NY section of the American Chemical Society since 2005 where she co-organized the Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium (ACS URS) for 6 years. She co-founded the New York Regional Alliance for Ionic Liquids (NYRAILS) and has been the Assistant Director since 2004. In 2007-2008 she was Director at Large for the NY section of the American Chemical Society. During the past 7years Dr. Lall-Ramnarine has donated over 100 chemistry textbooks to the chemistry department of the University of Guyana.

Over the past 14 years Dr. Lall-Ramnarine has mentored a total of 34undergraduate students from Queens College and Queensborough Community College. Twenty-one of those students were underrepresented minority students, twenty-three were women and three were Guyanese. Some are currently pharmacists, physician assistants, nurses, chemical engineers or completing Ph.D.’s or master’s degrees in chemistry or related fields. She has secured paid research internships for each student, and she has guided them to deliver prize-winning presentations at major conferences. Her publications include 31 student co-authorships by 14 individual Queensborough students. She has involved her research students in her collaborative research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Yale University, Rutgers University and several CUNY Colleges. Dr. Lall-Ramnarine is the 2018 winner of the Faculty Excellence in Scholarship award at Queensborough.

Dr. Lall-Ramnarine is married to Kumar Ramnarine who graduated from St. Rose’s High School in Guyana in 1987. That same year he met Sharon at St. Rose’s. They were married in 2002 and are the proud parents of two boys Julian aged 9 and Roshen aged 14 years old. Mr. Ramnarinegraduated from the College of Aeronautics in 1993 with a Bachelors of Technology in Aviation Maintenance and is FAA-A&P licensed. Mr. Ramnarine enlisted in the U.S Navy in 1988, at 17 years old as an aircraft structural mechanic. He served in the Navy Reserves for 12 years and the Army National Guard for 8 years. He retired from the military in 2007 as a Black Hawk structural mechanic. He is currently an Aircraft Engineer at Jet Blue Airways.