Oghenevwede Ohwovoriole in Abuja
The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Transfer (NOTAP), has commenced the process of patenting and commercialisation of research works by universities and other research institutions in the country.
Director General of NOTAP, Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi stated this in Abuja, Wednesday during an interaction with journalists on her achievements since assuming office.
Speaking on the theme, “Strengthening Indigenous Capacity: NOTAP’s Drive for Technology Transfer, Local Content Development, and Innovative activities,” Amadiobi said the agency had involved both the academia and industry so that researchers can work on topics brought forward for commercialisation purpose.
“My minister is very intentional about this– very intentional about commercialisation of research results, which we have already submitted to him. They are meaningful researches, which we need to commercialise.
“We have established 69 intellectual property technology transfer offices in 69 universities that we are still counting. We have informed the vice chancellors of Nigerian universities to set up such offices and we will come and educate them on intellectual property and technology transfers.
“As we are doing this, we are also taking record of all the researchers of these universities and research centres and documenting them in a compendium.
“So, we have compendiums from the universities to us and we put them in a database. If you will recall, recently, the ministry, our supervising ministry, which is the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, launched a programme titled Energise Commercialisation. This entirely was for commercialisation of all R&Ds,” she said.
On research Institutions carrying out research on areas of industry needs, she said, “NOTAP is bridging the gap between research and development with industry needs, “it is on our programme called the NITDF, NOTAP Industry Technology Transfer Fellowship. By this programme, we engage the universities and the industries, in what we call the triple helix. We liaise with the universities and the industries to sponsor, the industries will sponsor a Ph.D candidate in a Nigerian university to conduct relevant researches.
“They will provide the topics that they want researches for and such students will research on that with the assistance of the industries, because they wear the shoes, so they know where it pinches them. But usually, there are Ph.D candidates already established. This year alone, we certified about 15 of them to enter into this programme and they have gone into the various universities.
“And we are still looking for people to update some of the projects; the research topics we already have. But we are not getting enough persons to do the researches. So, we are going to do further advertisement to see if other candidates will come up.
“My minister is very intentional about this. Very, very intentional about commercialisation of research results, which we have already submitted to him. They are meaningful researches, which we need to commercialise.”
Speaking earlier, she said, NOTAP is transforming from a purely regulatory body to an active driver of national development, promotion, and facilitation.
According to him, NOTAP is strengthening technology transfer regulatory functions through compliance and enforcement, expanding the local vendor policy and other sectors of the economy, tightening technology transfer oversight, upgrading research infrastructure through the NOTAP industry research laboratory upgrade, and building strategic STI-driven human capital through the agency’s industry technology transfer fellowship.
