Innovation Report: Every higher education institution has its unique identity and approach to education and research. How would you define the DNA of the University of Trinidad and Tobago?

Prof Prakash Persad: Trinidad and Tobago is the most industrialized country in the Caribbean. The government felt that while the University of the West Indies was doing a good job, it was not focused enough on economic development. Therefore, UTT was formed to serve as a catalyst and aid the economic diversification and development of Trinidad and Tobago. Part of that meant producing industry-ready graduates who can work in industry.

What’s unique about us is that we work very closely with industries. Our programs are industry-focused. For example, we don’t have typical electrical or mechanical engineering programs. We have mechanical engineers with an option for mechanical utilities and electrical engineers with an option for electrical utilities. In terms of entrepreneurship, we have a department of mechanical manufacturing and entrepreneurship. Our mechanical manufacturing program was meant for product development, so entrepreneurship formed a part of it. Most of our programs are more practical and industry-oriented. Our engineering programs are accredited by British institutions through the British Engineering Council.

Innovation Report: What do you see as the major challenges towards fulfilling your goals and the major challenges that the country faces when it comes to education and the creation of employment?

Prof Prakash Persad: Trinidad and Tobago was and still is an oil and gas economy, but oil production has dropped from 140,000 barrels per day. Due to fluctuations in prices, there was a rational focus for UTT to help move away from oil and gas. While it remains important, we needed to develop the services sector more, and UTT was set up to do that.

In terms of employment, we have a unique program, not a sandwich program like the University of Waterloo. At UTT, our projects are industry-based. We send students to industry to tackle real-life problems there. They spend three months or sometimes more during the academic year doing their project in industry with industry partners. This way, the industry has a chance to look at potential graduates, and our graduates get a chance to work in industry and look at real problems, understanding the issues there.

Innovation Report: How do you go about forming relationships and getting understanding with business leaders and industry?

Prof Prakash Persad: Each program has an industry advisory board where people from industry come in, advise, and help in getting students placed in industry. We have that close linkage. For instance, when I was the head of the manufacturing program, we developed a very close relationship with over 100 manufacturers. We look at the problems they face and then try to get our students working with them.

One successful example is Angostura, famous for their bitters used in cocktails. We helped them automate part of one of their lines. These are things that started as student projects. We work with industry to get it out. They’ve seen the value of what we are doing, and we get valuable feedback from them.

Another example is our diploma program. The manufacturing industry told us very clearly that we needed to change our diploma programs. Traditional machinists were not really needed, and they wanted students to know more about business and management because technicians eventually progress to supervisors and managers. What they found was that those with just technical training couldn’t really fulfill the role properly. So, we looked at encouraging and putting in the program for students to do entrepreneurship and some management, and also to upgrade the technology to include CNC machines, etc. We changed the program that way, responding to industry needs.

Innovation Report: Can you give us some background on the specific entrepreneurship programs you have at the university?

Prof Prakash Persad: UTT Startup is part of the entrepreneurship programs we do. It was an incubator located in Arima, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused it to collapse. We have restarted the program now with about five potential businesses, but with a different approach. Instead of just providing facilities for them to develop their products, we’re trying to support them more.

For instance, through the Ministry of Digital Transformation, we help them understand the ecosystem. We also appoint a business mentor who works with each person in UTT Startup to guide them through real-life problems, such as getting funding from banks. Trinidad doesn’t have a really good system of funding for research.

In our Master’s program in Innovation, Manufacturing, and Entrepreneurship, we ask each student to register a business as part of the program to develop a service or product. They work on it until they get it, and then they actually start businesses outside. That has been pretty successful, with maybe 15 to 20 students over the past two to three years starting businesses that are still alive.

We also work with other industries. For example, we have an arrangement with the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) on a joint project located at UTT’s South Campus in San Fernando, where our mechanical and tropical programs are. We’ve installed equipment there as a pilot project to make rubber crumb from old tires, which is in progress. The strategy is to take that technology to various areas in Trinidad, particularly the outlying areas. Instead of people coming to the university, we want the university to go to the communities.

Innovation Report: What does the word “innovation” mean to you and within the context of Trinidad and Tobago?

Prof Prakash Persad: Innovation has two aspects for us. One, you can innovate on existing processes and systems to make them more efficient. For example, at the Port of Spain, where people send barrels of goods back to Trinidad, we went in and did process mapping to see how we could reduce the time by over half. That’s innovation – making an existing process more efficient.

The other aspect of innovation is creating new products. We look at existing products in terms of agriculture. For example, we look at breadfruit and a similar local fruit called chataigne. Students have made cereal and a kind of coffee drink from it. Another example is a small, fibrous fruit called “peewah”, also called peach palm (bactris gasipaes). One of our graduates actually set up a business using this fruit to produce flour that can be used to make cakes, etc. So, we’re looking at innovation to create new products and improve existing ones.

Innovation Report: Are there any further flagship projects at the University of Trinidad and Tobago that you would like to let a wider audience know about?

Prof Prakash Persad: I think the one we’re really looking at, which is going to be a big thing, is recycling old tires. It saves the environment, produces a new product, and is good for the circular economy. That’s one good example that’s in progress.

Innovation Report: How are you working to tackle the challenge of funding for research, and are you looking to build public-private partnerships or other types of partnerships to accelerate the commercialization of research?

Prof Prakash Persad: The problem is that lately, because of the economic situation, funding for research has decreased. We do not have angel investors here, but we don’t have that sort of culture as developed yet. The private sector’s mindset is generally that the university is being funded by the government, so they don’t need to pay us.

However, we are finding that this is changing. We have some funding and are getting increasing funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other grants to help set up these businesses. One project going on right now with the IDB is for shaping the innovation ecosystem.

The government has also passed legislation encouraging people to contribute to research on new technologies, offering a 150% tax break. So, it’s building slowly, but it’s happening at quite a slow pace.

Innovation Report: Where do you see opportunities to deepen your international collaboration, and can you give us some background on relationships you may have, particularly related to North America?

Prof Prakash Persad: We have quite a few MOUs with Canadian universities where we send students, and they visit us as well. We were part of the Erasmus project, where we had an exchange of scholars and students. That is continuing.

We are looking at having joint degrees with American universities and our university here, so we are moving that forward. One area in which we think we can have deeper collaboration with North America is in cultural studies.

In the area of environment, greenhouse gases, and shipping fuels, we have linkages with a lot of universities within that program. Among the five Maritime Technology Cooperation Centres (MTCCs) in the world, one is located at UTT. We work with one in South America, one in Europe, one in Africa, and one in Asia, and we are linked with universities through that. So, we have grown our international awareness of UTT and what we are doing.

Innovation Report: What are the building blocks of a successful partnership, particularly an international academic partnership?

Prof Prakash Persad: I think there must be synergy between our needs and the partner university’s needs. The researchers must benefit both. It shouldn’t be like some sort of PR where you give some money to the university, but there’s no real intent to take it forward.

We’re building partnerships because universities want to know that we can actually contribute, and they have seen that we can do the work. When we say MOUs, we insist that as a first step, there must be a project in mind. The MOU must be followed quickly by an actual project. If not, we are reluctant to sign MOUs because you can end up with a lot of them and nothing happens subsequently.

Innovation Report: When you take a step back and look at the development of the nation, how confident are you in the future for Trinidad and Tobago and its young people? Can you give us a score between 0 and 10 on your confidence level for the future?

Prof Prakash Persad: It’s a difficult question because there are many factors involved. What I can say is that we have changed the culture related to education to make it more employment-oriented and focused on entrepreneurship so that graduates can make a greater impact on the country.

Another factor is that people who graduate are looking for a better life, and the lure of North America is always there, encouraging migration. So, what we say is that we can control producing graduates who are useful and can take the country forward, and that is happening. We have actually increased enrollment, which is important and positive for the country because we are funding future taxpayers.

Overall, when you factor in the politics and economics of the world, I would say a middle-level score. I can’t predict the future in every area. However, if you want to score us academically, I’ll certainly give us a high score.