Your idea can help save the Environment !
The University of the West Indies is dedicated to environmental sustainability and climate action, and aims to empower young people across the Region to contribute to address the issue of climate change.
"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
-- Dr Jane Goodall
Meet our Experts.
An important goal of the UWI's Climate Change Competition is to provide useful educational and entrepreneurial experience focused on important real-world experiences.The UWI Open Campus invites student teams to submit business plans and concept papers on topics focused on current and projected Climate Change Impacts on the Caribbean's Economic, Environmental, and Social Sectors. This competition is divided into two (2) levels;
Dr. David V. Gibson
Senior Research Scientist Emeritus, The IC² (Innovation, Creativity, Capital) Institute, The University of Texas, Austin.
Entrepreneurship Regional Development
Dr. Gibson is the Chair of the UWI OC Student Entrepreneurial Competition on Climate Change and a member of the university’s Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He was Associate Director of the IC2 (Innovation, Creativity, Capital) Institute at the University of Texas at Austin where he served as Director of Global Programs and Research. In 2019 he became Senior Research Scientist Emeritus at the Institute.
For over 25 years Dr, Gibson has been a consultant to businesses, academia, and governments worldwide. His publications and research papers focus on regional economic development and S&T Based growth which have been translated into Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Finnish, Norwegian, and Portuguese. His most recent publications include The Entrepreneurial University: Context and Institutional Change (Eds.) L. Foss and D. Gibson Routledge, Pubs. (2015) and with M. Oden, “The Launch and Development of a Technology Based Economy: The Case of Austin Texas” in Growth and Change, 2019. He is a graduate of Stanford University, Department of Sociology.
Jim Butler
(retired) Managed economic development projects at the Texas Governor’s Office and Austin’s City Government.
Creative Industries Economic Development
Mr. Butler’s work focused on strengthening regional technology and creative sectors including educational and workforce development. While working in Austin he was key to building networks and relations with important international groups and by providing specific examples of Austin's economic growth from being driven by the public sector to a quite diverse economy where the technology and creative sectors play increasingly important roles.
Mr. Butler contacts and personal relations include Norway, Canada, Finland, Mexico, England, Guatemala, Sweden, Portugal and South Korea.
Robert (Bob) Hodgson
Advisor to the World Bank
Early Stage Finance Technology Entrepreneurship
Bob is based in the UK and for 25 years lived and worked in Cambridge a university city that has emerged as one of Europe’s major high technology hubs over the last 40 years. His work focusses on designing early stage business finance programs for public/private partnerships and programs to facilitate technology commercialization from universities and research centers. He currently mainly works as advisor to the World Bank in countries as different as Bosnia, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Ukraine.
In his career he has worked in more than 70 countries so has an extensive knowledge of needs and opportunities globally. He has also been a serial entrepreneur and business angel during which he has practical experience of mentoring entrepreneurs through the start-up and growth of their business.
Dr. Elin M. Oftedal
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship in UiT School of Business and Economics, UiT - Norways Arctic University
Healthcare
Dr. Oftedal received her PhD in Management with focus on entrepreneurship and innovation at Nord University. Her Master of Science in Business is from University of Stavanger and University of West Scotland. Dr. Oftedal participates in project on sustainable technology such as renewable energy and carbon capture, responsible innovation in areas such as health and is leading a work package in the current project concerning innovation and commercialization.
For over 10 years Dr. Oftedal has conducted research and build professional relationships in the Caribbean focused on building sustainable economies and healthcare.
Pliny Fisk III
Co Director, The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, Austin, Texas.
Sustainable Architecture Resilient Construction
Pliny originated and co-directs the oldest 501-C3 sustainable architecture and planning firm in the US. The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems moves the sustainability agenda in three key areas; one, the development of replicable Prototypes in the areas of green materials, green infrastructure, and building systems; two, the creation of 12 Protocols that set up the standards and procedure for application measurement and use from appropriate human scale life support to macro industrial ecology applications such as an IO/LCA/GIS model of the U.S.. And finally, three, significant participation in the creation of seven Policies at the city, state, and national scale.
Pliny has held professorship roles at 7 universities and has served as an advisor to several major foundations including the MacArthur Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Meadows Foundation. Pliny’s design and planning work has appeared in almost every major Architecture magazine, as well as Landscape Architecture, Planning, and has been published in books on sustainability by Wiley, Chelsea Press, Taschen, and others in English, French, German, and Japanese.
Ricardo Reolon Jorge
Federal University of the ABC Region, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Student Entrepreneurship
Ricardo Reolon Jorge is a Professor at the Federal University of the ABC Region, Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he teaches business administration and manufacturing engineering. He has been researching entrepreneurial universities in Brazil for the past several years and is part of the research team responsible for the Entrepreneurial University Ranking (EUR), a comprehensive tool used by the government when developing public policies related to education.
During his stay at the IC2 Institute, he is researching how the EUR can be applied to other Latin American universities, and how these universities can use the insights from the ranking to develop their entrepreneurial capabilities.
Dr. Carlos Scheel
Professor Emeritus EGADE Business School, Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM), Mexico.
Technological Innovation Circular Economy Systems DynamicsSustainable Innovation Systems
As technological consultant of UNIDO, USAID, PNUD, UNEP, WB, IC2 (Innovation Creativity and Capital Institute) and IDB; he developed the approach Compstrac©, Compstrat© (1992) for clustering and assembling of regional poles of innovation and technology based entrepreneurships, applied on more than 20 projects in 11 countries.
He is currently working on the framework SWIT: Sustainable Wealth creation based on Innovation and enabling Technologies; a framework used for the formulation of sustainable strategies and policies for the creation of innovation clusters and sustainable sharing societies and communities of developing regions; based on a “Disruptive, Systemic and Circular (DiSC)” innovation approach. He is currently working on a procedure for the “Design of Circular Economy Business Models” to train and mentor circular economy entrepreneurs, for LAC countries’ conditions and capabilities.He has been visiting professor and research scholar on more than 25 institutions of 14 countries. He is author of more than 50 papers and 13 books.
Jim Vance
Commercilization Entrepreneur Training
Jim Vance led programs for The University of Texas at Austin’s IC2 Institute designed to identify and commercialize innovative technology solutions and train entrepreneurs to successfully launch and scale their ventures while leveraging their countries and regions indigenous strengths.
He was manager in Lockheed/India Dept. of Science & Technology – India Innovation Growth Program (IIGP), the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) technology accelerator (ATAC), the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) Health Technology Accelerator (HTAC), and similar technology venturing programs in South Korea, Kuwait, Mexico and Portugal. A general objective of these programs was to introduce in-country entrepreneurs to prominent U.S. companies and markets winning them new customers and business partners. Prior to Jim’s 12-year tenure with the IC2 Institute, he was marketing and resolution manager for Dell Services to North America, Europe and South Asia.
Dr. Cliff Zintgraff
Market Research Entrepreneur TrainingSTEM Education City and Regional Development
Dr. Cliff Zintgraff is Chief Learning Officer at SAMSA, a STEM education center in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Prior to this he was Executive Director of SASTEMIC which taught STEM education programs connected to the workforce and equity needs of San Antonio.
He recently completed ten years of leading innovation, regional development and STEM education programs for the IC2 Institute, a think-and-do tank at The University of Texas at Austin. At the IC2 Institute, Dr. Zintgraff led entrepreneurship, innovation, and STEM education in support of international programs, with a focus on Portugal, Colombia, India and the Czech Republic. He was Principal Investigator for STEAM-LABS, an 18-month STEM-based development program in Medellín, Colombia; and Co-PI of South Asia Connect, which served 160 entrepreneurs throughout South Asia. Dr. Zintgraff teaches how to use early and deep market research to assess the viability of ideas in the market. His most recent book publication is STEM in the Technopolis in which he shares strategies and cases that lead to successful STEM education programs that meet the needs of cities. Dr. Zintgraff holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Trinity University; an M.S. in Science and Technology Commercialization from UT Austin; and a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas.
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