The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus has part­nered with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to host an his­toric UWI Re­search Ex­po from Oc­to­ber 1 to 5. The mul­ti-faceted event will fea­ture in­ter­ac­tive dis­plays, a sym­po­sium on re­search, en­ter­prise and im­pact, film screen­ings, con­certs, over 30 mi­ni-work­shops, as well as a UWI Mar­ket­place and Kids Fun Park.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the UWI Re­search Ex­po, cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat promised that it would be "in­for­ma­tive, en­gag­ing, ex­cit­ing and mem­o­rable."He said: "Our stu­dents and re­searchers are pas­sion­ate about what they do, they have an in­nate cu­rios­i­ty about the world and they con­tin­ue to part­ner with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to de­vel­op their in­no­va­tions."

Guest speak­ers at the launch, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor Re­search at UWI, Prof Wayne Hunte; CEO of the Trinidad Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cather­ine Ku­mar, and NGC pres­i­dent, In­dar Ma­haraj, all laud­ed the uni­ver­si­ty for host­ing the time­ly event.

Next month, the UWI Re­search Ex­po kicks off with a day filled with every­thing choco­late, at the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre's host­ing of World Choco­late Day at the JFK Au­di­to­ri­um on Oc­to­ber 1. The next day, the Sym­po­sium on Re­search, En­ter­prise and Im­pact will be held at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, which will fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tions and pan­el dis­cus­sions that high­light the key find­ings of some of the projects that ben­e­fit­ted from ded­i­cat­ed re­search fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment, as well as oth­er UWI projects.

These pre­sen­ta­tions will fo­cus on the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives that have con­tributed to na­tion­al and/or re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment by cre­at­ing en­ter­pris­ing so­lu­tions, en­gag­ing our com­mu­ni­ties or fa­cil­i­tat­ing ev­i­dence-based pol­i­cy­mak­ing.

The ex­po it­self opens on Oc­to­ber 3 and runs through to Oc­to­ber 5 at the JFK Au­di­to­ri­um and Quad­ran­gle, where in­ter­ac­tive dis­plays in­clud­ing ex­per­i­ments, a gam­ing zone, zo­ol­o­gy mu­se­um, as well as a seis­mic earth­quake booth, will be show­cased by the fac­ul­ties and units.

A wide range of free mi­ni-work­shops will al­so be held at the cam­pus, pro­vid­ing unique, hands-on learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pants–from pan tu­to­ri­als to un­der­stand­ing 4G net­works; from Chi­nese busi­ness eti­quette to re­new­able en­er­gy ap­pli­ca­tion work­shops, to name just a few. A com­pre­hen­sive sched­ule will be avail­able on­line soon.

The ex­po is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the en­tire fam­i­ly to learn about UWI re­search while at the same time en­joy­ing prod­ucts from units in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty Field Sta­tion and Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre at the UWI Mar­ket Place.

At the Kids Fun Park they can en­joy mi­ni-con­certs, sto­ry­telling and car­ni­val char­ac­ter pa­rades, get close to the an­i­mals in the pet­ting zoo, and have fun in the gam­ing zone, fish­ing pond, boun­cy cas­tle and UWI SPEC sports chal­lenge zone. Ad­mis­sion is free to all events and guid­ed tours are avail­able for schools and groups.