Staff Notices

 UWI St Augustine Industry Innovation Lab, also referred to as UWI Saiil, is an initiative that seeks to connect private sector companies, industry partners, and other types of organisations, that have innovation needs or challenges, with resources, such as research groups, Centres, start-ups and companies, which can offer new technologies/methods to help solve those needs. We refer to those organisations as Challengers and we call those who can help, Solvers. 

The Saiil initiative is being executed by the St Augustine Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (STACIE) in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Connect Bogota. Click here to read more on this. A primary intent behind UWI Saiil is that it becomes a catalyst for collaborative University/Industry research partnerships.

In October 2024, a call was issued for Challengers, and we currently have nine Challenger organisations in the programme. Now the programme needs Solvers and the call is open to members of academic staff.

The Solvers are not expected to bring an off-the-shelf solution but rather something that would have been demonstrated, in a lab environment for example, and is now ready for validation in an industrial environment (corresponding to Technology Readiness Level 4 or 5).  The implementation of the solution in the Challenger organization will be an Open Innovation process, which will involve collaboration and some level of co-creation between the Solver and Challenger.

The novel factor in UWI Saiil is that we can say to external entities that “We can be your ‘go-to’ R&D Partner," and if we don’t have the internal capacity, we can source it for them. In doing so, we establish the relationship and have the opportunity to participate in the technology transfer process.

Click here to get more information and submit an Expression of Interest. The deadline for Solvers to indicate their interest is Friday, Febraury 14, 2025.

STACIE can be contacted at STA-Saiil@uwi.edu or at exts. 82483/84488.