Since Dr Graham King joined The UWI in 2009, he has been acutely aware of the potential benefits of the university engaging more systematically with industry.
“What we haven't done very effectively is build a widespread university-industry collaboration effort that allows for a concentration of efforts and leveraging up our impact,” he says.
When the automotive engineer took up the mantle of Director of the St Augustine Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (STACIE) in August 2022, he was primed to help the centre establish stronger connections externally and internally. Used to living between the worlds of industry and academia, Dr King believes STACIE is perfectly positioned to help drive The UWI to become more financially independent.
UT: What role do you see STACIE having in making UWI self-sufficient and independent financially?
GK: STACIE is a very important player. We have five pillars of activity. In one area, we are engaged in managing research projects, especially larger multidisciplinary ones across faculties. Secondly, we are the centre point for consultancies. If an entity is looking for support or wants the university to bid for some consultancy activity, they come to STACIE. Thirdly, we are basically the tech transfer office, managing the commercialisation of the university’s intellectual property. Fourth is university industry collaboration. We are an important interface with industry partners. Fifth is engendering student entrepreneurship. Our mandate is to coordinate innovation and the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
UT: What management philosophy do you embrace?
GK: I have high expectations of my team. At the same time, I give them a lot of encouragement and empowerment. I try to engender transparency and visibility. It’s important to build a harmonious dynamic that also extends to engaging internal stakeholders – primarily the faculties.
UT: What motivates you?
GK: The core is working with our industry partners – manufacturing, energy, construction – to make sure what the university does is highly relevant.
We focus on UWI becoming more financially independent. Not that we don't want government interventions, but we need to build up other elements of financing. That motivates me to build our income from grant funding. It allows us to scale up our research to a different level, have more people collaborating – ideally multidisciplinary people – so we're putting out high quality publications. It allows us to get better equipment, to really build everything up.
UT: Do potential investors see UWI as an opportunity?
GK: We do know individuals and companies looking for investment opportunities outside the University, but they have been disappointed because the ideas pitched to them didn't meet the mark. There’s no pipeline of mature developed ideas.
UWI stands in a very strong place there. Some of the things coming through us are very high quality. Products, ideas, services, ventures... and if we can help our inventors get to that place of maturity and improve the packaging of ideas, we stand a good chance. We actually have investors who are very keen. We're just trying to thrash out the details.
UT: What are some of the most exciting projects happening at STACIE?
GK: We have an exciting engagement with ANSA McAL. They’re supporting us in our commercialisation efforts and getting over the bar with some projects.
UWI Fine Cocoa Products Ltd has been formed as a spin-out company, emerging from the globally renowned Cocoa Research Centre. This company will commercialize the production of the world’s best chocolate and processed products for boutique chocolate making. We are targeting global markets with these products.
Emerging from years of research and development in the Department of Chemistry, we have a line of asphalt-based products that are better than any equivalent products available on the market. Two products are already licensed to a company for production and now we are getting external support for market studies and further performance testing so that we can license the other products and bring them into production.
The PHI (Percussive Harmonic Instrument) is establishing a small-scale plant which can produce 100 units a month. They are going to begin production in June/July.
The Department of Life Sciences has some very interesting Sargassum-based products like Sargassum-based biostimulants for crops. They also have an antibiotic adjuvant with huge potential.
UT: Tell us about the HIT RESET project (Harnessing Innovative Technologies to Support Resilient Settlements on the Coastal Zones of the Caribbean) under STACIE?
GK: So, HIT RESET focuses on improving the resilience of coastal communities through urban planning and innovation. We are focusing on projects that will bring new technologies – ideally indigenous technologies – to create solutions.
This is one of the larger projects we've undertaken, with a value of 4.9 million euros. This is one the first projects where we are the executing entity and dispersing funds. Usually, we are only beneficiaries.
We have third-party projects from Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Barbados, and Trinidad.
It’s important to UWI in terms of building capacity and potential impact.
UT: What do you hope to see from STACIE in the coming years?
GK: STACIE provides a service function. We rely on the outputs of others on campus. I hope that we will facilitate more cross-faculty, multi-disciplinary, high impact research. We are strongly supporting expanding our externally-funded research. It allows us to coalesce activities so that we get that critical mass and high impact in a few domains.
We have one or two areas where we're already global leaders. Right now, we are in cocoa, but we can be in others like energy transition, especially small island energy transition. We could be global leaders in the utilisation of natural tropical products, in creating medical solutions.
To find out more about STACIE, visit https://sta.uwi.edu/stacie/.
