The University of Port Harcourt is a public university established by an Act of Parliament of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It started in 1975 as a College of University of Lagos and became full-fledged University in 1977. The University of Port Harcourt is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), Association of African Universities (AAU) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM. We collaborate with several governmental and non-governmental organisations both locally and internationally.

The University is uniquely located between the southern-most part of the West African tropical rain forest, and the northern fringes of wetlands, swamps, rivers and mangrove forests that make up the Niger Delta and the hub of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. The University is surrounded by rural agrarian and artisanal communities that have been positively impacted by its presence in the area. The University of Port Harcourt like all public and private universities in Nigeria is accountable to the Federal Ministry of Education through the National Universities Commission (NUC) which regulates all Universities in Nigeria. The University has international accreditation of all programmes in the World Bank Africa Centres of Excellence for Oilfied Chemicals Research and Public Health and Toxicology Research. Also, the University has undergone an international quality review: gap analysis stage done by QAA Global for the rest of its programmes. The University has 1456 academic staff with close to 90% possessing a PhD or equivalent with females constituting 30.13%. It has 320 full professors with females constituting 25% of that figure.

The office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Development is saddled with the responsibility of advancing and supporting research, as it relates to the University’s researchers and external agencies and sponsors.

Under the watch of the 7th Vice Chancellor, the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Development was approved by the University’s Senate at its 128th Meeting held on September 27, 2010, with focus on research, creativity and innovation with the ultimate goal of transforming the University into an entrepreneurial University where research meets enterprise at a Technology (Research) Park to harvest the benefits of commercialization of research output for the benefit of society. At the helm of affairs, pioneering the nascent office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Development was Professor Bene Willie-Abbey whose tenure ended abruptly in early 2015 owing to the fact that the White Paper on the then Visitation Panel Report on the University rejected the Office of Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Development).
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Thereafter, the Centre for Research Management and Development (CEREMAD) was established by the merger of the Office of the Chairman, Research and Development Board in the Office of the Vice Chancellor and the Centre for Research Management (CEREM) through a letter from the 8th Vice Chancellor, dated 21st August, 2015. The Centre was established to ensure effective coordination of research activities in the University. The merger of the two units expanded the scope of the Director’s work to cover all activities on Research and Development in the University. Initially established to operate “till further notice,” the Centre’s existence was endorsed by the National Universities Commission, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund and the wider University community for the coordination of research and development activities in the University. Consequently, the Centre received invitations to participate in various local, national and international research and development-related meetings. With the re-emergence of the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Development, the Centre for Research Management and Development (CEREMAD) ceased to be.

Professor Iyeopu Minakiri Siminialayi stepped in as the 2nd Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Development upon his election by Senate and appointment by the Governing Council of the University on August 18, 2021. The office under his leadership was to inject fresh impetus to the creation of an ecosystem that will promote innovation, intellectual property protection, technology transfer and entrepreneurship in keeping with the 9th Vice Chancellor’s vision to make the University of Port Harcourt a truly entrepreneurial university where research creates new knowledge that solves society’s problems, is transformed into technology that is commercializable to boost the University’s revenues, researchers incomes, create employment and assist Nigeria’s efforts at industrialization.