The future of the university-industry relationship

  • Hamid Merchant

Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities

Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts, and will likely continue to do so as we begin to navigate our way out of it. We recently spoke with three thought-leaders from industry, academia, and research commercialisation about the lessons they’ve learnt from the pandemic and the future of the university-industry relationship.

Subject

Covid19 and future of univeristy industry relationships

Period27 Jul 2021

Media coverage

1

Media coverage

  • TitleThe future of the university-industry relationship
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletIn-part
    Media typeWeb
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    Date27/07/21
    DescriptionDr Hamid Merchant, from The University of Huddersfield, provides the view from academia:
    A key challenge that has arisen from the pandemic is how to teach and support university students remotely, as campuses across the world have closed to keep staff and students safe. This has had a major impact on researchers and lecturers as they have focussed on new learning and teaching strategies for students, often pushing the limits on what they can provide. Additionally, universities have had to address how their current approaches can support students as they move from college to university, often creating new strategies through digital technologies.

    Overall, there has been a slowing of university research to achieve this, as staff struggle to provide teaching and support in a completely new capacity. Over the next few years, researchers will need support to focus once more on their research.

    Hamid agreed that venture capital funding is essential for success in the future of university-research collaboration. If there is a lack of early funding and support for commercialisation, ideas, research and technology from universities will move immediately into open access, which makes it difficult for industry to commercialise them later on and important public interest projects might miss out on commercial motivation.

    It’s important for technologies to be protected with IP early in the research process along with early investments, and as the pandemic has highlighted the importance of university-industry collaboration, hopefully, we’ll see more of this in the future. Certainly, more help and support to bridge the gap would be welcome in the future for university-industry collaboration.

    Producer/AuthorRuth Kirk
    URLhttps://in-part.com/blog/future-of-the-university-industry-relationship/
    PersonsHamid Merchant