JAMAICA could already have locally engineered clean technologies serving entire communities if the patents created by its own PhD students were not being left on the shelf.
The Caribbean Climate Innovation Centre (CCIC) is raising the alarm that promising innovations developed at The University of the West Indies (The UWI), the University of Technology (UTech), and other institutions are being neglected instead of commercialised.
“What we find is, once these [research] papers are published, these students move on with their lives; it’s what they use to get their doctorate and PhD [as] they are good ideas. What we want to see is, once they get their doctorate and PhD, they actually take these patents and innovations and commercialise them,” shared Carlinton Burrell, chief executive officer of CCIC.
The issue was highlighted during a Conversations in Science forum hosted by the Scientific Research Council last week. As discussions shifted to Jamaica’s climate resilience in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, Burrell pointed to a worrying trend: universities continue to generate what he described as “brown economy” innovations such as engineering prototypes in water management, agri-tech, transportation and climate resilience that could be deployed across communities, yet once the thesis is complete the patents remain unused.
Source: Jamaica Observer