As Dr Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, stated in his keynote address at the Spring 2022 Conference tagged the evolving role of universities in the American innovation ecosystem, “universities must step forward in becoming more accountable for the economic success of their regions as well as the country.” He suggested that one way of doing this is to find new points of alignment and cooperation with government, industry and other kinds of organisations – domestic and international. While we are glad to report that we have made some progress in this regard with our recent partnerships with both industry and government agencies, “we must become more adept at breakout thinking such as how to launch new research endeavours that are beyond the traditional scope of government support,” as Dr Michael Crow recommended.

As a university, we must increase the number of people who are engaged in collaboration and encourage curiosity-driven or problem solving research and incentivize outcomes-oriented quality research.

We thank the Vice Chancellor, Prof Owunari Abraham Georgewill for his support and approval of this report. We are also grateful to the Principal Officers of the University, all the Heads of Academic Units and particularly our researchers who, despite the difficult research environment have continued to produce excellent work. Prof JA Ajienka, we are grateful to you for your abiding encouragement, counsel and support. We thank all our benefactors, without whom our work will have been that much harder.

We also use this medium to celebrate the outstanding achievements of our dedicated, talented and resilient members of staff in the office of Research and Development who devoted their time, energy, personal data and call credits to the cause of this collation. We appreciate the Centre and Institute workforce as well as our students, all of whose high level of performance summed up to this annual report. Worthy of mention is Miss Jennifer Emejuru, a co-opted member of the team who is a staff in the office of the Information, Publications and Public Relations (IPPR) Unit. Miss Jennifer has selflessly dedicated her time and journalistic expertise to drive this project professionally.