Research and Community Service Vice President

Askalemariyam Adamu/PhD/

Research and community

service V/president

Mobile No.+251-913072854

Email Address: askaledamu@gmail.com

DMU aspires to be one of the top ten applied science universities in East Africa by 2030. To realize such long term vision ensuring the quality of research, technology transfer, community engagement, and innovation; strengthening university industry linkage; promoting indigenous knowledge; creating effective collaboration and partnership; encouraging teamwork among researchers and building a culture of evidence based conclusion are crucial. The university has rich experiences in doing problem-solving research, community services and innovating different technologies that contributes towards local and national developments. Thus, the Vice President for Research and Community Services (VPRCS) is accountable for planning, coordinating and managing research affairs, community services, university industry linkage and technology transfer and publication and dissemination of project outputs. The office aspires to achieve excellence in research, technology transfer and community services and dedicated to bring tangible economic, social, intellectual, and cultural developments by conducting academically rigorous and socially meaningful research, projects, disseminating knowledge and agricultural technologies.

Based on the potential and needs of the local community, two centers of excellence in agriculture and culture have been established in the university. The center of excellence in crop productivity and agro processing is anticipated to play a significant role in addressing food and nutrition insecurity through the design and provision of support systems for smallholder farmers, the introduction of new crop varieties, the use of climate-smart technologies, the provision of demand-driven community services, and the ongoing training of those farmers. Additionally, the excellence in culture initiative is designed to foster the development, preservation, and promotion of the surrounding linguistic and cultural heritage as well as to secure the community’s ownership of those heritages.

Currently, the number of academic staffs engaged in doing research and projects works has been increasing from time to time. As a result, there are more research projects being carried out and published, technologies being distributed, and community services projects being implemented. For instance, 337 articles are published in national and international accredited journals, and  thirty-two community-based and developmental projects are  implemented  in the year 2021/2022. The projects focus on the quality of primary and secondary school education, community health, small-scale irrigation, watershed management, wheat irrigation, rehabilitation, agricultural technologies, indigenous knowledge, and spring water development. All of these efforts produce observable effects in the community. Moreover, the university journal of Inter-disciplinary Studies received national accreditation within the same year. These all creates good opportunity for staff members to conduct more research and projects, which will improve the university’s ability to disseminate the results of their work.