Academia–Industry Forum
Where the research meets the people who can use it. Industry is in the room to hear what the university is working on, and to say what it needs.
Conference Theme
Sustainable Frontiers
Sustainable Frontiers: Integrating Systems for Food Security, Health, Housing, and Humanity to Combat Global Challenges
Why this theme, why now
Food systems, public health, housing and human security are converging crises rather than separate fields. The 19th edition asks researchers across the sciences, humanities and policy schools to bring evidence to bear on problems that no single discipline can solve alone, and to publish that evidence where it can be used.
Sessions run across three days at the Jelili Omotola Halls, organised into the eight subtheme tracks set out below. A research fair runs alongside the sessions for all three days, so work in progress and commercial research have somewhere to stand too.
19th
Edition since inception
8
Subtheme tracks
3
Days of sessions
2
UNILAG journals open to accepted abstracts
Our undertaking to authors
What you get for submitting
Submitting a paper costs you weeks of work, so this is what the conference commits to in return. These are not aspirations: each one is something the Secretariat is accountable for, and the dates are the ones published in the call for abstracts.
- 01
Every abstract is read and answered
No submission disappears. Each one is assigned to a track, reviewed by the panel for that track, and answered in writing by 21 September 2026, accepted or not. Your reference code shows you exactly where it is in the meantime.
- 02
Accepted oral presentations go forward for publication
Abstracts accepted for oral presentation are considered for publication in the UNILAG Journal of Humanities (UJH) or the UNILAG Journal of Medicine, Science and Technology (UJMST), the university's own peer reviewed journals.
- 03
Your work is presented to people who can use it
Sessions are attended by faculty, policymakers, industry partners and the press. Papers that speak to live policy questions are drawn into the conference communique, which the university publishes and circulates after the conference.
- 04
A permanent, citable record
The programme, the book of abstracts and the communique stay online under the university's domain after the conference closes, so a presentation here remains findable and citable years later.
- 05
A verifiable certificate, issued automatically
Presenters and delegates receive a certificate the moment attendance is confirmed, carrying a code anyone, including a promotion panel or a funder, can check against this site.
Submit an abstractAbstracts close Monday, 14 September 2026. Decisions by 21 September 2026.
Visibility
Where your work surfaces afterwards
A conference presentation that ends when the session ends is a poor return on a research project. Work presented here reaches print, policy and the public record through five separate channels, and every one of them stays online under the university’s own domain.
UNILAG Journal of Humanities (UJH)
Peer reviewed, for accepted work in the humanities, law, education and the social sciences.
UNILAG Journal of Medicine, Science and Technology (UJMST)
Peer reviewed, for accepted work in medicine, the sciences, engineering and technology.
Book of abstracts and conference programme
Published under the university domain, indexed by search engines, and archived with the past editions on this site.
The conference communique
The recommendations the conference makes to the university and to government, published after each edition.
University press and social channels
Selected work is written up by the university's communications unit and carried on its national channels.
Presenting does not transfer copyright. Authors keep their work, and publication in a UNILAG journal follows that journal’s own peer review, on its own timetable.
Alongside the papers
Conference highlights
Faculty members, researchers, academics and postgraduate students from universities and research institutes within and outside Nigeria.
From Thesis to Wealth
A colloquium on turning research into something that earns: commercialisation, spin-outs and the route from a finished thesis to a working business.
Exhibition of Products and Innovations
Organisations, vendors, departments and research groups show what they have built. Space runs from open floor to a premium booth.
II. Subthemes
Eight tracks for the call for papers
Every submission is assigned to one track at the point of submission. Reviewers and session chairs are organised along these same lines, so choose the track closest to your contribution. If a paper genuinely spans two, pick the one whose methods you used and say so in the abstract.
Track I
Cultural Heritage, Human Rights, Humanities and Sustainable Development
Development policy that ignores culture tends to fail on contact with the communities it is meant to serve. This track takes heritage, language, history, philosophy and rights seriously as inputs to sustainable development rather than decoration on top of it, and welcomes work that documents indigenous knowledge, tests rights based programme design, or reads the humanities against a live development problem.
Track II
Biotechnology and Genomic Innovations for Food and Health Security
Food security and disease burden are increasingly addressed with the same toolkit: sequencing, molecular diagnostics, controlled breeding and bioprocessing. This track wants applied work, including negative results, that moves a Nigerian or wider African food or health problem forward, and is equally interested in the regulatory and biosafety questions that decide whether the science reaches anyone.
Track III
AI, Data Science, Cybersecurity and Clean Tech Innovation
The computational track, covering both the building of systems and the study of their consequences. Papers may present models, datasets, security analyses or deployed systems, and the panel is explicitly interested in work grounded in African data and African operating conditions: intermittent power, constrained bandwidth, and datasets that do not look like the ones benchmark models were trained on.
Track IV
Leadership and Policy Strategies for Sustainable Development
Why do sound policies fail in implementation? This track examines institutions, incentives and leadership: what makes a ministry, a university, a state government or a firm capable of carrying a long horizon commitment. Evaluations of real programmes, including ones that did not work, are particularly welcome.
Track V
Public Health, Drug Discovery, Therapeutics and Global Preparedness
From molecule to health system. This track covers drug discovery and natural product chemistry at one end, and epidemiology, health financing and outbreak preparedness at the other, on the argument that a therapeutic that no system can deliver is not yet a solution. Clinical, laboratory and health policy submissions are all in scope.
Track VI
Transformative Education and Capacity Building for Future Sustainability
Education research with something at stake: what is actually being learned, by whom, and whether it matches the work available. The track covers curriculum, assessment, teacher development, technical and vocational training, and the growing question of what higher education is for when the tools of a profession change faster than its degree programmes.
Track VII
Smart Cities, Human Centered Urban Design and Environmental Resilience
Lagos is the case study on the university's doorstep: a coastal megacity absorbing growth while the water rises. This track wants work on housing, transport, drainage, waste, coastal defence and urban data, and is as interested in the informal city as in the master planned one.
Track VIII
Social Policy and Human Security in Emerging Economies
Human security in the broad sense: income, food, housing, safety and the social protection systems meant to underwrite them. The track covers poverty and inequality measurement, social protection design, migration, insecurity and conflict prevention, and the informal arrangements people build when formal systems are absent.