ACETEL, CE&GS move to create awareness on research commercialisation

The Africa Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning (ACETEL) in collaboration with the Directorate of Entrepreneurship and General Studies (DE&GS), have held maiden webinar to create awareness on research commercialisation

The virtual event, held on August 25, 2022, was titled “Research Commercialization Process.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Technology, Innovation and Research, Prof. Monioluwa Olaniyi, in her address, urged participants to ‘’come together and ensure that the NOUN ecosystem for research commercialisation works and we must come up with ideas from the scratch that are eye-catching.

‘’The university is very much interested in this development and is ready to protect ideas provided by the staff of the university.’’

She commended ACETEL and DE&GS for organising such an enlightening webinar, calling on the attendees and the NOUN community to be involved in the movement to create ideas that will solve needs.

The Director, CE&GS, Prof.  Juliet Inegbedion in her lecture titled “Research with Commercialization in Focus,” said the focus of the research should not only be for academic purposes, but should be geared towards how it can be utilised.

“This is the commercialization aspect of research that people fail to do,’’ she said.

Inegbedion stated that in academics, staff and students should work towards commercialising their ideas and this should be done from the findings stage.

She urged academic staff to look beyond carrying out a research by also working on commercialising the research and to achieve this.

‘’We must look around for a problem or challenge that needs to be fixed, how it can be solved, if there are any existing solutions and the success story of such a problem.

‘’As a university we must look at proffering solutions to problems in our country by commercialising our researches,’’ the lecturer said.

Earlier in her opening remarks, ACETEL Director, Prof. Grace Jokthan, said the purpose of the webinar was to provide sensitisation on how products or technology created during research activities can be developed and marketed to the public.

According to her, ‘’This webinar is aimed at creating awareness on how to move these research products from the shelf to the end users.’’