Professor St. Clair King is an ingenious individual with several copyrights for software applications. His inventive mind and his pioneering spirit set him apart from many others in his field. A man of vision, he is known for his passion and dedication to promoting local innovation and to developing local capability in computer and electrical engineering. One of his greatest accomplishments is the formation of Ixanos Limited; a company developed to build innovative products for the energy and telecommunication sectors using local skills.

St. Clair King was born in 1938 in Port of Spain. He attended Mucurapo Boys’ and Richmond Street Boys’ EC Schools. At the age of ten, he won a scholarship to Queen’s Royal College. In 1958 he won an additional island scholarship to study electrical engineering. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Glasgow (1962) followed by a Master of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1963) and a doctorate degree from Glasgow University (1967) in control systems.

Always a high achiever, King remembers feeling immense pressure to perform. However, he used this as fuel to excel, and developed a greater love for what he was doing. Throughout his professional career, he did everything with great fervour. His career began as a project engineer at the Ministry of Works (1963). He also served as Acting Head at the John S Donaldson Technical Institute (1964).

It was at The University of the West Indies, however, that he made his greatest contribution. He served from 1966-1999 as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and later Professor. He introduced several innovative programmes including Control Systems as a core programme in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Master’s in Electronics and Instrumentation. An outstanding educator, he is noted for developing many local professionals in the field.

With the assistance of NIHERST, Textel and the OAS, Professor King started the Microprocessor Development Project (1989). Its aim was to develop a laboratory and local expertise in technological innovation to meet industry needs and to seed innovative start-up companies. The Real Time Systems Group at UWI was created and it developed many successful solutions for local industries.

The Group later blossomed into Ixanos Ltd. King resigned from UWI to guide Ixanos through its infant stages. Ixanos is UWI’s first “high-tech start-up company”, an accomplishment that few other universities in developing countries have attained. He currently serves as Ixanos’ Chairman and is on the Board of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago.