KIU Western Campus – The “Training of Trainers” (ToT) Grants Training Workshop at KIU Western Campus has come to a close today April 20.

The workshop, which started on Monday, April 17, gathered Deans, Associate Deans. Heads of Department, Lecturers and Assistant lecturers, to skill them in grants and proposal writing techniques.

One of the highlights of the closing day of the closing day were online presentations from Dr. Umar Yahya of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Center of Excellence, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, who talked about the importance of Intellectual Property as well as Dr. Janice Busingye, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Finance and Administration at KIU, who held a Q & A session with the participants.

Dr. Yahya, in his presentation, explained the origins and motive of starting up the IPR Center of Excellence.

“The whole innovation center idea came about as a result of research that was done on the innovation hubs around the country and we identified that most of them, if not all of them, have weaknesses that result into these hubs not innovating real, novel solutions,” he said.

He added that the university has experts in many areas it is teaching, meaning that it is well-grounded in the specific domains and it is the innovation part that the center of excellence takes care of.

“When these ideas (from research) get to the center, coupled with our expertise, the center now transforms them and fine-tunes them,” he explained.

He added that the center is going to try and patch up the huge gap that exists not only at KIU but in other institutions through its 5 core programs.

These include knowledge and skills transfer programme, research and innovation training programme, knowledge transfer associates programme, intellectual property management and commercialization plus business incubation and consultancy.

He expressed concern that after an idea is put through the paces and finally published, the process ends there instead of putting it to greater use.

“We have been accustomed to research, publish – research, publish. Even a saying was coined that either publish or perish,” he mused.

“But today, I want us to adopt the additional saying of publish, patent or perish. So, instead of just ending at publishing, we should also say protect,” he added.

His presentation was followed by a Q & A session held by Dr. Janice Busingye, who took questions about the pathway a grant takes right from the donor to the researcher and the various machinations of utilizing the grant.