UNIVERSITY of Guyana undergraduate students and other attendees were, on Thursday, inspired by the motivational personal story of Professor Babatunde Ogunnaike, and the words of encouragement he gave, challenging them to think big in their own undergraduate research, at day two of the University’s Third Annual Undergraduate Research Conference.
The event was organised by the UG Office of Undergraduate Research, which has been pushing for the past year to generate interest and funding for undergraduate research by students of the university. This year, the event was celebrated under the theme “Undergraduate Research: Sharing Experiences, making impacts”.

Some 22 students from the university were given opportunities to share and talk about their undergraduate research to their peers during the three-day event.

Ogunnaike, the William L. Friend Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, opened his presentation by speaking on work he did through his undergraduate research on an oil refinery, at just 19 years old, using computer-generated models to come up eventually with his solution, sparking his love for computer generation.

Ogunnaike has since written a number of books and papers which focus on educating engineers in instrumentation, systems and control at many universities
Using his own personal experiences and those of other inventors like him who achieved great measures through their research, Ogunnaike urged the students to explore issues in Guyana that need solving and use their undergraduate research to find solutions to the issues, as long as they think big, and never give up.

“You don’t have to create something brand new. You can create something that extend what has been created before. You have to ask yourself, what is the problem? Why is it important? What have others done before? How do I plan to approach this problem? And allow yourself to be flexible. You may think to do it this way and then half way through you run into problems and have to be creative,” Ogunnaike noted.

Ogunnaike has a First Class Honours degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Lagos in 1976, and did a Master degree in Statistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the US, and has a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering also from Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the University of Delaware in 2002.

He noted that Delaware is well known for its undergraduate research work. He told the students to use their own natural curiosity to guide them to solutions.

“We are all born curious. It is amazing how school beats it out of us. Kids are the most curious people you have ever seen. In between then and when they get to university we beat it out of them. Don’t ever lose your curiosity. Go back to when you were a child, go back to that curiosity, don’t lose that curiosity, your country needs you,” he said.
“The things that happened to me when I was 19 years old, I still carry with me. It may not happen to you or for everybody at that age, but there are some of you here who are going to do something that may end up being a big deal for Guyana. Whatever the case is, give it a try, because 100 per cent of shots you don’t take don’t score. So go ahead and take the shot. Go ahead and give it a try, what’s the worst that can happen?”

He also shared the story behind the invention of Gore-Tex, by Robert Gore, a close friend of his, when Gore was just 20 years old.

“He was a sophomore when he got the idea for Gore-Tex. There were people working for his father. They were working on this and weren’t getting anywhere and he was 20 when he discovered to do it. He hit a six. Not everybody can do that, but I’m giving you an idea. Someone may be sitting in this audience right now, an undergraduate student who may hit a six in his research.”