2005 Press Releases
University College Cork (UCC) to establish links with the University of the West Indies
UCC plays host to a delegation from the University of the West Indies
(UWI) who are visiting Ireland and the UK (16-21 October) to forge
international research interactions and to study methods for using
research to create knowledge-based industries. The UWI delegation are
visiting UCC and various governmental organisations in Dublin during
their week-long trip to Ireland.
The delegation from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, in
Jamaica comprises the Dean of the Faculty of Pure & Applied
Sciences, Professor Ronald Young, the Executive Director of the Mona
Institute of Applied Sciences (MIAS), Dr. Howard Reid, and the legal
advisor to the MIAS Mr. Maurice Tenn, a former Rhodes Scholar.
The MIAS is an affiliate of the Faculty of Pure & Applied Sciences,
set up to facilitate the conversion of the research and other
activities of the Faculty into commercial enterprise, this as a part of
the thrust to improve the economy of the Island through science and
technology innovation.
The delegation's visit to Ireland was prompted by the remarkable
success that the country has shown in this direction, and by the
similarities that they discern between the Irish situation and that in
Jamaica. Threatened with the demise of the sugar and banana industries
as a result of imminent removal of long-standing preferential tariffs
in trade with the UK, Jamaica and many other West Indian Islands are
seeking to fill the gap by attracting and developing new,
globally-competitive knowledge-based industries. Ireland has been
notable in the success of transforming its economy from a largely
agricultural economy to a diverse economy in which knowledge-based
industries play a leading role.
During their stay in Cork the delegation's activities have been
coordinated by Professor Gregory Provan, former Rhodes Scholar and Head
of the Department of Computer Science, who is assisting in developing
their computer related programmes. Professor Provan, Head of
UCC's Computer Science Department, said "It gives me great pleasure to
welcome Dr Howard Reid and his delegation to UCC and I very much look
forward to forging partnerships in areas of mutual interest in our
respective institutions".
The Jamaican team have visited Departments in the Science Faculty, the
Cork Constraint Computation Centre, the Boole Centre for Research in
Informatics, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre and met with Professor
Peter Kennedy, Vice-President for Research Policy & Support and
Professor Patrick Fitzpatrick, Dean of College of Science, Engineering
and Food Science.
So far they have been impressed with the funding, recruitment policies
and the excellent work of the assembled delegations, that have led to
strikingly innovative developments in distributed computing, the
accurate timing of computer algorithms, in Bioinformatics and in
constraint computing. They will be forging alliances with some of
these groups. In Dublin, the delegation will meet with officials of
Forfas, the Science Foundation Ireland and Enterprise Ireland to
discern further the ways in which the funding of science research and
its link to industry have ensured both the enhanced research output and
the invigorated industrial climate which they have observed. The
aim is to parley these new alliances and insights into the
establishment of an effective organisational framework which will
replicate some of the success stories that they have seen in Ireland.
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