Foundation Plans Solar Power, Digital Facilities For OAU Postgraduate College

The Tunji Olowolafe Foundation has pledged to offer solar energy, digital studying amenities and digital infrastructure for the Postgraduate College of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.
Its founder, Dr Tunji Olowolafe, disclosed this in an handle on the grand finale of the Postgraduate College Week, organised as a part of the college’s sixty fifth anniversary celebrations.

He mentioned the muse would instal a devoted solar energy system for the faculty’s administrative workplaces, ICT centres and examination amenities, present a completely geared up digital studying and oral defence facility, and digitise and modernise the faculty’s boardroom.

Olowolafe added that the muse would fund preliminary analysis and pilot research on a case-by-case foundation to strengthen researchers’ capability to safe worldwide grants.
It would additionally sponsor specialised coaching in grant writing, donor compliance and institutional development.

Speaking on the theme, “Promoting Research Excellence and Innovation in Postgraduate Studies: Charting the Future,” Olowolafe described analysis as a scientific technique of correcting societal errors by way of proof, urging universities to problem typical knowledge and develop options to nationwide issues.

He referred to as for wider entry to analysis alternatives, together with partnerships that will allow individuals with sensible experience, similar to skilled farmers, to take part in college analysis beneath correct supervision with out compromising tutorial requirements.

Olowolafe additionally advocated expanded digital and versatile studying, stronger university-industry partnerships, and a higher emphasis on sensible analysis outcomes, together with patents, commercialised merchandise, and options to industrial challenges.

He urged Nigerian universities to topic indigenous information in medication, agriculture, building and meals preservation to scientific validation, citing Chinese scientist Tu Youyou’s analysis into conventional medication, which contributed to the event of artemisinin, an necessary malaria therapy.

Highlighting OAU’s analysis achievements, he cited a $5 million Gates Foundation grant secured by Professor Ibraheem Awowole to assist scale back maternal mortality in Nigeria and greater than 70 patents secured by campus researchers with help from the college’s Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Office. He additionally challenged alumni to extend monetary, institutional and mentorship help for college analysis a minimum of tenfold.

Olowolafe recommended Vice-Chancellor Professor Adebayo Simeon Bamire for advancing analysis and know-how initiatives and urged the college to scale up its efforts to organize college students and researchers for rising applied sciences, together with synthetic intelligence.

He additionally burdened the significance of public schooling in social mobility, drawing on his personal academic journey from the University of Ilorin to his skilled profession.