By Abubakar Baba Ahmad.
The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi is to partner the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) towards establishing a Nuclear Research Centre to build the capacity of its staff in the area of Smart Agriculture, Medicine, Power as well as Science and Technology.
Professor Ibrahim Hassan Garba, Vice Chancellor of (ATBU), stated this at the opening of a 2-day Workshop on National Research Fund (NRF) Grant Implementation Strategy towards Commercialisation organised for 100 selected academics from the institution and Sa’adu Zungur University (SAZU).
Professor Ibrahim Garba who said the partnership will lead to the establishment of undergraduate degree programmes in Nuclear Sciences and Engineering, noted that the National Universities Commission (NUV) has already developed four curriculum Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) for the two courses.
“One of them is harnessing atomic energy for generating power. But beyond this, atomic energy at the level that we are looking at has a lot of applications in agriculture, smart agriculture systems, in medicine and science and technology. So part of our collaboration with the Atomic Energy Commission is to build capacity and building capacity from scratch”, the Vice Chancellor reveals.
In a paper titled From Research to Revenue: Advancing ATBU’s Economic Growth through (NRF) Commercialisation, the Vice Chancellor said the university is working to leverage on its collaboration with the Bank of Industry to push for funding of start-ups and commercialisation of research works through the first Innovation Park set up by the bank at the institution.
“Currently, we are interfacing with a lot of development partners so that we can collaboratively discuss how to get seed funding for establishment of start-ups and commercialisation of products, and of course, one bank comes in already handy, the Bank of Industry, because it’s part of its mandate, and we already have a collaboration with the Bank of Industry”, He explains.
He said developed countries invest heavily in research innovations and development, hence the need for improved funding from government, organisations and the private sector to drive steady economic growth.
Earlier, Dr Isah Yakub Mohammed, the Acting Director (ATBU) Directorate of Research, Innovation and Development (DRI&D), said the training was organised to move further from ideation and research to enterprise and marketing.
Dr Isah Mohammed who acknowledged the paucity of research grants and seed funds to pursue development ideas, listed some IT solutions developed by the university to include a technology can that solved the issue of insecurity by identifying firearms and some prototypes waiting for industry take up.
He emphasised the need for the participants to think outside the box by transiting from office and laboratory research to market regenerative wealth toward solving the immediate community problems.
“Most of the academics are not trained to go from the laboratory to market. But we want to change all the narratives to see that research is a business, and then from this, you can spin off products and then you get what you call regenerative wealth. Not to just sit in an office, but from your brain, you bring out solutions that will continue to earn you income, even if you are no more”, The Ag. Director DRI&D says.
The training which saw academics from the Professorial Cadre downwards in attendance, featured paper presentations from the former Director RI&D of the University Professor Fatima Sawa, Professor Timothy Bata among others.
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