Se­vere fi­nan­cial con­straints have cre­at­ed a some­what sil­ver lin­ing for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

UTT’S Chair­man, Pro­fes­sor Ken­neth Julien, said the in­sti­tu­tion has made re­search its pri­or­i­ty as it aims to be­come a cat­a­lyst to stim­u­late na­tion­al growth while al­so be­com­ing more self-sus­tain­able.

Speak­ing at the UTT’s Sec­ond An­nu­al Re­search Sym­po­sium at the O’Meara Cam­pus yes­ter­day, Pro­fes­sor Julien said “at the heart of UTT’s vi­sion and mis­sion is the man­date to pro­duce in­no­va­tion and eco­nom­ic val­ue”.

Us­ing tech­nol­o­gy as a dri­ving force to achieve this, he stat­ed UTT must con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in mod­ern in­fra­struc­ture. This is where he is hop­ing UTT’s Tamana Cam­pus will shine when it comes on stream be­fore year’s end and he in­sists they will not be left be­hind de­spite se­vere fi­nan­cial con­straints.

Ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Julien, “we want to show the rest of the coun­try we could do more for less through bold and vi­sion­ary think­ing”. Sur­viv­ing these chal­leng­ing times he added means the in­sti­tu­tion must re­vis­it its process­es while at the same time, en­sur­ing stu­dents re­main the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty. In the end, he not­ed ex­cel­lence will al­ways be with­in their reach de­spite be­ing a mov­ing tar­get par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas of en­gi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy.

“Tech­nol­o­gy is an ever-chang­ing process and emerg­ing coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go will al­ways be chal­lenged to keep up to date. For­tu­nate­ly, the Gov­ern­ment on be­half of the tax­pay­ers con­tin­ues to sup­port the sev­er­al ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions with­in the coun­try, in­clud­ing UTT”, he not­ed.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the sym­po­sium, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said as chal­lenges con­tin­ue to evolve so too must UTT. By do­ing so, he stat­ed will al­low the uni­ver­si­ty to be less re­liant on the pub­lic’s purse.

Dr Row­ley said “I ex­pect you to seek out av­enues to com­mer­cial­ize your re­search your re­search as this can be both a source of aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and giv­ing this coun­try a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in the 21st cen­tu­ry”.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so called on the stu­dents to as­sist UTT to be­come, even­tu­al­ly, an in­sti­tu­tion en­dorsed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as a ma­jor game-chang­er of the fu­ture.

Among the in­no­va­tors, this year is Kendell Boodoo, a 22-year-old autis­tic an­i­ma­tion stud­ies stu­dent. His true-sto­ry film “Ken­ny and Brown Bear” was fea­tured at the sym­po­sium.

He told Guardian Me­dia the film re­flects his ex­pe­ri­ence as an autis­tic child in New York await­ing treat­ment with “Brown Bear”, which was giv­en to him at the age of three by his par­ents.

Kendell’s moth­er, Amoy Boodoo told Guardian Me­dia UTT’s an­i­ma­tion pro­gram has helped her son. She said she was grate­ful that the in­sti­tu­tion ac­cept­ed her son de­spite not hav­ing any of the pre-req­ui­sites in­clud­ing CSEC pass­es. She en­cour­aged oth­er ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions to cre­ate sim­i­lar op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers like Kendell.