Martin HenryTHE SCIENTIFIC Research Council has just hosted the 15th Annual National Conference on Science and Technology. For sheer longevity, congratulations are in order. Over all these years, Merline Bardowell, Divisional Director for Information and Co-ordination Services at the SRC, has held it all together as Conference Co-ordinator aided by secretary Donna Robb, the constants in the system while others have come and gone.
I remember well struggling through the rain to get to that first Conference in April 1987 at the Jamaica Conference Centre, then a brand new facility displaying the pride of Jamaican craftsmanship. In the fierce competition for special months and weeks, the S&T Conference sought a spot on the annual national calendar of events at which it could be in the spotlight. November was finally settled upon and has become Science Month. Everyone, from the Prime Minister outwards, agrees on the importance of Science and Technology for national development, but we seldom act vigorously on that agreement. The same problems of support, organisation, financing and management keep coming up like a recurring decimal.
When special adviser to the Prime Minister, Arnoldo Ventura, who faithfully gives overviews on the state of S&T at Conference year after year, is awarded the OD, it is as much for persistence as for performance. In fairness, Mr. Patterson who has himself served as Minister for Science and Technology for many years before and while being Prime Minister, has done more, such as it is, for the strengthening and advancement of S&T than any other leader. The visionary Norman Manley as Premier created the SRC in 1960 specifically to apply S&T to national development. Mr. Patterson's institution is the National Commission on Science and Technology for which there remains hope of a brighter tomorrow.
The S&T Ministerial ball is now in Phillip Paulwell's court with his reputation for getting things done. And with former SRC executive director, Jean Dixon, as his new Permanent Secretary, he should be able to deliver more. Mr. Patterson is not well this week. The burdens of office are heavy. I wish him a speedy recovery. Rest and relaxation will restore. Even Prime Ministers are human, though they and us may be tempted to think otherwise. Years ago when I co-ordinated the UNDP Project on Strengthening Endogenous Capacity in Science and Technology out of the Office of the Prime Minister under Mr. Patterson, we commissioned a study on native folk technologies. Perhaps some roots wine would be restorative.
Previous S&T conferences have explored nutraceuticals - foods as medicine - and there has been in the past much short-lived excitement about the prospects of a nutraceuticals industry for Jamaica which has been blessed with some of the world's best spices and flavours and bioactive natural products in high concentrations. This conference flew in a high-powered nutraceutical/bioextraction expert scientist and entrepreneur in the person of Paul Clayton, brother to Professor Anthony Clayton who now heads the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Research and who is himself making waves locally as a "foresighting "expert.
I notice pharmacologist Henry Lowe who now heads Blue Cross is behind a Ganja Research Institute. Ganja is loaded with bioactive compounds, many of medicinal value. And Jamaican ganja has naturally the world's highest concentration of THC tetrahydrocannabinol the stuff which gives the high why the weed is smoked. Researchers and entrepreneurs Albert Lockhart and Manley West have already demonstrated that pharmaceuticals can be produced from this loaded weed here and by our people.
This year's conference focused on the Bioextraction Industry. So there we go again. "Great opportunities exist in the bioextraction industry. Herbal medicines, for instance, have become increasingly popular with global sales totalling US$17 billion. We therefore need to position ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities which could have positive effects on the economic development of our country". "Of particular interest," the conference brochure continues, "[is] the review of the potentially lucrative bioextraction industry and the demonstration of the application of Science and Technology as a powerful economic tool".
A note of advice: I think the SRC can better serve the interest of the small scientific community and of the public by running conferences which are more general in theme rather than narrowly focused, specialist conferences. The research base is not there for narrowly defined two-day conferences, the general public will not be drawn to highly specialist conferences, and, in any case, the brief of the SRC is for the support of science for national development in general. Other groups and institutions, qualified and positioned to do so, should pick up on the narrow foci.
Whatever becomes of conference papers and project studies? They seem to go where travellers go and never return. The SRC does publish some proceedings, often years after the conference, but these seem to be of merely archival value.
I would be happy to hear of conference papers which have gone on to generate commercial activity. What I do know, from having attended the vast majority of the 15 conferences, is that there have been numerous papers with commercialisation prospects presented. Merline's next big challenge, which is also that of whoever is going to be the next executive director of the SRC and of the Board led by Dr. Conrad Douglas, is not the organising of the 16th conference, but the creation of an incubation mechanism which can move papers with commercial potential into the market.
Venture capital
The Council has already created Marketech as a registered company mostly for marketing its own research and development project. I am not sure how successful this venture has been. The SRC should tell us. But perhaps the company can be the kernel of what I am proposing. A key role for the Minister is to lead the generating of the kind of funding which moves innovations to market. A culture of backing ideas with venture capital financing is virtually non-existent in the country. The leadership of the big combo Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Technology is strategically positioned to engineer a transformation. The Prime Minister, who understands the issues Ventura has made sure of that even if slow to act on them, may have had in mind such a synergy when he combined the portfolios and handed them in one package to the young dynamo Paulwell.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
