Celebrating Inventors and Innovation

Tuesday 7 June heralded the annual Innovation Evening held by RC&I as an acknowledgement of UCT inventors and celebration of their achievements.  For the evening, a number of UCT stakeholders are invited along with all current UCT Inventors to hear about the 2015 highlights and for some Inventors to receive their South African patent certificates, NIPMO certificates and Inventor Mugs. 

The Evening also serves as the launch for the publication UCT Innovation 2016.  The theme this year was surfing, waves and innovation and the metaphor is woven through the publication.

Prof Danie Visser, the DVC of Research and Internationalisation, opened the evening with his views on the innovation space within the university as well as his hopes for the future. 2016 sees the end of Prof Visser’s term and his support that has helped the RC&I office to flourish under his guidance was acknowledged at the event.

Guest speaker Raphael Smith, Managing Director of newly formed BMEC (Pty) Ltd, took the audience through the challenges of innovation and entrepreneurship, based on their team’s experience spanning working at the UCT spin-off CapeRay, to establishing the new engineering firm. While the firm offers its engineering expertise to external customers, they also are developing their own device, the g-tag, used to monitor head injuries (concussion) in rugby.  Certainly an inspirational talk for aspiring entrepreneurs.