It is a matter of pleasure for me to introduce the Office of Research, Innovation & Commercialization (ORIC). As all of us know that we used to have three directorates viz. Directorate of Research, Continuing Education and Industrial Liaison which were offering various services to the engineering community, industry and society for example – continuous engineering and technical awareness, communication skills, confidence build measures, strategic and time management skills through organization of various workshops and seminars, arrangement of internships, keeping records of research and tracking citation record of faculty members.
Despite of all this, there were various bottlenecks and improvement was required to achieve the best possible results out of the vested resources of the university. This was only possible through continuous reform and improvements in our research policies, objective oriented relationship with industry and demand bases continuing education courses. One of the most important aspect was the integration of all these services and their commercialization to make a way forward for university’s self-dependence. To achieve all these objectives, we need a strong commitment, monitoring and feedback from various stakeholders including the faculty, students and university management.
Owing to the importance of the aims and objectives of the aforementioned directorates in the improvement of the ranking of this university, recently a new directorate has been established namely Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC). I would like to take this opportunity to share the aims and objectives of the newly established directorate of ORIC as under:
- Supporting the university’s strategic research directions and policies
- Increasing and diversifying external research funding
- Providing the guide-lines to faculty, officials and students of the university for acquiring the various grants
- Improving recruitment and retention of top faculty
- Improving transformation of research into the public benefit (patent development)
- Strengthening university-industry relationships
- Promoting entrepreneurship, technology-transfer and commercialization activities that energize and support the local and national economy
- Organization of continual professional development (CPD) courses
- Effective use of infrastructure, equipment and human resources
- Enhancement in the university’s endowment fund
In pursuance of above objectives, allow me to inform you that in this short time of its emergence, the directorate has developed the data-base of Ph.D. faculty including their impact factor, citation factor, projects funding and other achievements/contributions, has organized various events on campus and plan to launch two series of Certificate/CPD Courses which will start from 22nd October, 2013 and onwards.
At the end, I request to all the stakeholders of the university and engineering community to please come forward in sharing your ideas, observations and feedback for the betterment of this directorate and ultimately for the future prospectus of MUET, Jamshoro.
God bless us.
Director, ORIC
MUET, Jamshoro
