Hierarchy
Functions
- Facilitate the university in matters related to Research Innovation and Commercialization
- Keep the internal stakeholders (faculty, researchers, students, etc) up to date on available research and commercialization opportunities offered by domestic and international donors
- Training of internal stakeholders on research proposal writing, product development, technology development, industry problem solving, Intellectual Property (IP) rights and research/product/technology commercialization
- Maintain excellent relations with all `national and international donors, research funding agencies and commercialization-facilitating organizations
- Facilitate internal stakeholders in creating/initiating research collaborations, joint research programs and university-industry linkages
- Maintaining the industry pool around academic departments and keeping the internal stakeholders up to date on the latest research areas, industry problems and requirements of the relevant industry having relevance to academic areas
- Facilitate internal stakeholders in signing Research Collaboration Agreements, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDC), Material Transfer agreements (MTA), Technology/product, and License/Commercialization agreements
- Facilitate the university in patent filing, award of patents and patent licensing
- Check all the research and commercialization proposals (Technical & Financial) before final approval from the Vice Chancellor’s office and submission of approved proposals to any internal or external entity/organization
- Maintain the record of any research and commercialization activity funded by UHE or by any national or international agency
- Mention the official record of all approved research, innovation and commercialization activities relevant to any individual faculty member/student/department and make it available to the VC office for any use
- Facilitate project awardees in project execution as one focal point for all projects matters i.e. fund release, hiring of students/staff, procurement, etc. (other than technical work)
- Receiving and processing all administrative matters, facilitating requests received from the principal investigators/project awardees, matching them with approved proposals and forwarding them to the relevant administrative department for execution i.e. fund release from treasurer office, hiring of students/staff by HR office, procurement of good and services by P&P office, etc
- Maintain the project record file, and get it ready and up to date for internal and external audits
- Follow-up of the project timeline, annual/final reports submissions and issuance of Project Completion Certificates from the university side
- Compiling the research, innovation and commercialization activity record and publication of the ORIC annual report at least once a year
- Creating, maintaining and updating the ORIC webpage for all internal and external stakeholders
- Any other task/duty assigned by the Competent Authority UHE
ORIC SOP
UHF Funded Projects
- UHE-funded project means a project which can be executed and completed by existing departmental/UHE resources or need very nominal resource i.e. consumable supplies, testing or validation from outside, etc
- Maximum funding limit of each project is PKR 0.5 million (if required) depending on available funds. This funding limit may be increased or decreased as per the direction of the Competent Authority and availability of funds
- Third-party involvement in these projects is allowed. However, UHE will not bear any kind of technical or financial liability from any third party in any case
- There will be no honorarium in case of UHE funded project, however, the Principal Investigator will get a share of commercialization revenue as per UHE-approved policy
- Duration of such a project must not be more than 12 months (an academic year or two-semester)
- All UHE faculty and students are encouraged to initiate research, innovation and commercialization projects on their own from the existing departmental/university resources
- Detail of such a project must be submitted to the ORIC office on the prescribed form available on the ORIC webpage in the download section
- All these projects must be endorsed by the Dean of the Facility/head of the department before submission to ORIC
- A student can only submit a project through his/her supervisor
- On each submission, the ORIC office will check the proposal and issue a unique identification number to the proposal, update the relevant database and send it to the WVC secretariat for approval
- The decision of the WVC secretariat will be communicated to the applicant within two weeks, and the execution of the project will only be allowed if the project is approved
- In case of any funding or facilitation approved by the WVC secretariat, the ORIC office will issue facilitation letters to all concerned departments
- At the completion of the project, the awardee will submit a completion report in the prescribed format available in the download section of the ORIC web page
- All completion reports must be endorsed by the Dean of the Faculty/head of the department before submission to ORIC
- ORIC will send all the completion reports to the WVC secretariat for final approval and issue completion letters only if it is approved by the WVC secretariat
- All the research/commercialization projects initiated by the university faculty (Regular/TTS/Deputation/Contract) must be submitted to ORIC for approval from the competent authority (Worthy Vice Chancellor UHE)
- Any project which is not routed through UHE ORIC and not approved by the competent authority will not be considered a legitimate PI’s or University project. Such a project will not be included in the yearly ORIC-UHE report
Project submission to an organization other then UHE
- Funding opportunities i.e. call for proposals, expression of interest, etc. will be shared on the ORIC webpage/social media/WhatsApp groups as announced by any domestic or international funding agency with an internal deadline
- Interested applicant will follow all the instructions given in the application form and submit the proposal to ORIC well before the date announced by the funding agency so that the ORIC have sufficient time to process all applications for internal review, approval and final submission
- ORIC will enter all applications in ORIC registers and send them to the Ethical Review Board for internal evaluation
- After the internal review, ORIC will compile the results and send them to the WVC secretariat for university endorsement
- All the projects approved by the competent authority (WVC, UHE) will finally be submitted to the funding agency by the ORIC and followed up after submission
- Any project not submitted through ORIC, not evaluated by the UHE Ethical Review Board, or not approved and endorsed by the WVC UHE will not be considered a legitimate UHE proposal, and such proposals will not be entertained
Industry Linkages
- For general relations where faculty do not need to sign an MoU, upon request of the relevant department, the ORIC will organize a university-industry linkage meeting for that specific department
- For general industry-academia meetings, the list of invitees will be finalized after consultation with all internal stakeholders i.e. relevant department, ORIC, WVC secretariat, etc
- After finalization of the industry list, ORIC will prepare the meeting documents and send them to the WVC secretariat for approval