The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kolawole Salako has commended the University’s Department of Mechatronics Engineering, College of Engineering (COLENG) for developing a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Based Training Equipment which addresses the need of the University and the society at large.
Prof. Salako gave the commendation during his on-the-spot-inspection of the PLC based training equipment assembled and developed by an immediate past student of the University, Akinade Adedayo and a final year student, Daniel Adeleke, under the sponsorship and supervision of a contract staff and renowned Professor of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Lawrence Kehinde.
According to the Vice-Chancellor, “I was very happy when you were talking about the relevance of this project to our students, our University and the society at large. We have been focusing on your Department like others since 2018 because you are just starting”.
I was part of the team that was thinking of Mechatronics Engineering and I kept asking what is it about, but now I have seen that Mechatronics can be applied to virtually every area of life”
He continued, “We thank you for demonstrating the relevance of Mechatronics to our University and our society. You have done well, please keep it up and we are happy that the College is also proving that this Department matters”.
Prof. Salako expressed joy over the assemblage of the PLC based training equipment by students of the University and ongoing efforts in related projects.
“Some of our Engineering students are constructing some projects on the water pump in such a way that when the project is completed you don’t need to put the pump on or off when the water reach certain level because it is self regulatory with minimal human intervention”.
Reiterating the relevance of Agriculture to every academic field and facet of life, Prof. Salako pointed out that, “One of the things that we should take home is that anything we do in Engineering is relevant to Agriculture and that has been the philosophy of our University”.
“We are not supposed to do Engineering like conventional Universities, we suppose to focus Engineering on the development of Agriculture, Computer Science, Physics because they are related”.
Speaking further, the Vice-Chancellor stressed the need to genuinely channel research towards societal needs and development and not only for the purpose of promotion in the Ivory Towers and Academic Community in general.
“IITA has left basic research, they are now into what we call research for development. We should not embark on research for the purpose of promotion”.
People are coming from the industrial sector talking about the need for industries to key into research. I think we should know more of the challenges faced by the University so that we can adapt our projects to address it”, he added.
