The Graduate Students’ Association of Ghana (GRASAG) KNUST chapter has launched a research fund to enhance and promote the research interests of its graduate students.
The fund will support graduates in their quest to solve societal problems through research.
Highlighting the challenges graduate researchers go through, the 31st GRASAG, KNUST president, Felix Kofi Adusei mentioned that the fund will enable graduates to research their innovative ideas, emphasizing that the reputation as a university thrives on research and as such, the need for the fund and a walk-in research hub.
The Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Prof Mrs. Rita Akosua Dickson, reiterated the essence of research and the university’s efforts in promoting research geared towards improving and solving societal problems.
She highlighted that as the best university in the world for the provision of quality education as published by the 2023 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, the university places a premium on research.
The vice chancellor appealed for the commercialization of research outcomes and called on the industry to adopt the prototypes and policy briefs generated from research to solve the day-to-day problems as humans and as a country.
The Vice-Chancellor indicated that “Problems of society remain the problems of this university and for us as a leading Science and Technology University, it is our mandate and responsibility to go through research to be able to profess solutions to the challenges that humanity has.”
She added, “We place so much premium on research as a research-intensive institution. As I alluded to in the past, as a university, we haven’t just depended on government support, we do write for grants from outside. We have found very innovative ways internally to support research.”
Prof. Mrs Dickson said, “When we do the research, policy briefs come out and it is up to us as a nation to address ourselves to these policy briefs so that the research will become meaningful to us. Let me also talk about the commercialization of our research. Once we come out with these prototypes, with solutions, we expect the industry to come in and also pick up these results and prototypes and commercialize them so that the lives of the people we are serving will be better.”
She, however, appealed to the general public for support.
“We want to appeal to all institutions, corporate organizations, well-wishers, and corporate organizations, well-wishers, and people who think that through research we can do a lot in solving problems.
“To come and support this graduate research fund we want to assure all and sundry that ultimately what we have put on ourselves as a university is to always ensure that the gown does not remain at the Great Hall. But then it is taken to town, that the impact of the research that we are carrying out is felt among the people in Ghana, subregions, Africa, and across the globe.”
