After a few months in the doldrums following the recommendation by the Presidential Visitation Panel to the University of Port Harcourt and subsequent order by the National Universities Commission and the Governing Council of the University to abrogate the Office of Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Development, the Minister of Education and the Chairman of Council wrote to the 7th Vice Chancellor, Prof Joseph A Ajienka, who had a few months of his tenure left, conveying the approval of the Visitor to reverse the abolishment of the Office. The 9th Vice Chancellor, Prof Owunari Abraham Georgewill, acting on the approval which was given six years earlier and to fulfil his vision of an entrepreneurial University, reinstated the Office.
The vision of the Vice Chancellor is a truly prosperous University of Port Harcourt that relies on innovation, technology transfer and commercialization of research outcomes by staff and students of the University. Accordingly, the mission of the Office of DVC R&D is to build an ecosystem that promotes innovation, intellectual property management, technology transfer and entrepreneurship. The office has set about changing the mindset of academics by getting them to see themselves as academic entrepreneurs. Afterall, innovation is the result of research, one of the primary responsibilities of all academics. If researchers set about using research to solve problems of our immediate society and by extension global problems, they can with the help of the Office of the DVC R&D benefit from these solutions when they are licensed to industry and commercialized.
Research that solves problems is usually of very high quality and expensive and so part of the tasks of this office is to reach collaboration agreements with Universities and Industry to make cutting-edge research infrastructure available to our staff and students. We are encouraging our staff and graduate students to apply for grants and coordinating efforts to attract institutional grants to our university that will improve our infrastructure. Grant offers are very competitive and one of the criteria for awarding such grants is global visibility and ranking. It is therefore part of the tasks of the Office of DVC R&D to ensure that research output is of the highest quality and published in high impact factor journals. We will accordingly, reward those who bring international recognition to our university by their efforts in this regard, to encourage others.
The office will do everything possible to enhance the capability and capacity of our staff and students to conduct research of the highest quality, the incubation of business ideas and facilitation of start-ups and spin-offs through our Technology Park and Innovation Hubs.
This University will realize its true potential when all researchers commit to making ours a truly entrepreneurial university by ensuring that all research is geared towards solving a problem, that intellectual property that results from such research is protected by a patent and licensed to industry for commercialization.