RC&I Operations During COVID-19 Shut Down

The South African national shutdown commenced on 27 March 2020 and will continue for 21 days.  During this period RC&I staff will be working remotely and essentially all functions will be operating as normal. 

Meetings will be moved to virtual ones during this period and in line with the UCT Executive’s decision to not hold events till the end of June, we have postponed functions such as the Catalyst Lunches (where inventors, industry and funders come together) as well as World IP Day celebrations till later in the year.   The Hot Desk initiative will also start after mid-year, where representatives from the innovation, intellectual property and contracts teams within RC&I, as well as Research Finance will spend time a few hours in departments.

The current call for Innovation Builder funding that closed recently is being managed on-line and will be reviewed by the panel in an on-line meeting, so there should be no delay in these awards, where successful.

Should you require a new research contract to be logged,  please contact researchcontracts@uct.ac.za or initiate the process on eRA.  Plans are in place to deal with signing contracts on a case by case basis, related to funder requirements.

The patent attorneys that RC&I use are all working remotely so new provisional patents are still being drafted, etc. and the same is true for patent prosecutions in other territories.  It’s a great time to review your research and check whether there is anything that is potentially patentable. Feel free to speak to us.