̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - collaboration

Greater business-university collaboration will reap rewards, says new report

skbf2 — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:09:34 +0000

Valuable interactions between businesses and universities in the UK take many forms, but a lack of capacity by firms and information from universities is holding back even greater collaboration, says a new report.

̽��ֱ��report by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School found that people-based interactions are the most common form of business-university interaction at 45%, followed by problem-solving interactions at 30%, commercialisation at 24%, and community-based interaction at 23%. Even within the commercialisation category, use of academic publications was most common at 19%, while spinouts and licensing were only 9% and 2%, respectively.

Report based on survey of nearly 4,000 companies

̽��ֱ��report based on an online survey of 3,823 companies in 2020-21 found that there is much untapped potential for the university sector to work further with business. Collaboration is curtailed by companies' lack of capacity to tap this important resource and by a lack of information from universities on how they can help businesses.

"A key finding of the report is that interactions take multiple forms that are far more frequent than spinoff and licensing transactions, and the vast majority of businesses interacting in these multiple forms find benefits that meet or exceed their expectations," said report co-author Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge.

"But the survey results also make clear that it's lack of capacity on the part of companies, and a shortage of information provided by universities – rather than the costs of interaction – that is holding back greater collaboration with the UK's university sector, and this is costing the economy in terms of innovation and competitiveness. This issue could be addressed by businesses devoting more attention and staff to building their capacity for interactions with the university sector. This would be time and money well spent in terms of potential rewards and impact on company performance.

"Universities could also devote more attention to informing companies about the support that can be provided, and business schools have an important role to play in this."

Firms lack ability to seek knowledge from universities

Among the more detailed findings, the survey showed that companies of all types and sizes are "lacking in the ability to search for external knowledge from universities and invested only modest effort and time in integrating this knowledge into their companies". More than half of companies with at least one interaction with universities said that lack of resources was the biggest constraint on further interaction, followed by difficulty in identifying a university partner to help their businesses.

̽��ֱ��impact of COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to university-business links, with more than a third of firms reporting that it had impacted their interactions with universities. If the destructive impact of the pandemic on collaborations persists it will harm future economic growth and business performance.

̽��ֱ��115-page report – ̽��ֱ��Changing State of Business- ̽��ֱ�� Interactions in the UK 2005 to 2021 – is co-authored by Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the CBR at Cambridge Judge; Michael Kitson, Assistant Director of the CBR; Ammon Salter of the ̽��ֱ�� of Bath; David Angenendt of Technical ̽��ֱ�� of Munich and the CBR; and Robert Hughes of the CBR.

Other findings of the report include:

UK businesses interact with universities on a global scale, not only locally or regionally. 'Knowledge exchange interactions operate over multiple regional, national and international geographies.'
Individual academics and individual professional staff at universities play a big role in starting and sustaining collaboration with businesses. 'Personal contacts are important mechanisms for university-company interactions.'
̽��ֱ��diversity of university types in the UK higher education sector is a 'strength of the system', because companies interact with large research-focused universities as well as smaller and more specialised institutions.
Companies that interact with universities rely on a diverse spectrum of academic disciplines.

Universities can help in full range of business functions

"Companies seek university interactions to solve the full range of business functions," says Alan Hughes. "These wider functions span strategy and business organisation, finance, logistics, human relations and marketing. As a result, interactions spread far beyond the STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths) disciplines to encompass, in particular, business and management studies and the social sciences, as well as arts and humanities. Non-STEM disciplines are particularly significant in knowledge-intensive services and other service industries, which are the dominant sectors in UK economic activity."

More than 80% of all companies surveyed said their university interactions met or exceeded their expectations, yet this was greater in more business-related areas of interaction such as human resource management, financial planning and business strategy. Interactions that did not meet expectations were concentrated in tech and process development, as well as logistics and procurement.

"This finding is a reminder that the UK higher education sector, including business schools, play a role far broader than only in the well-publicised technology sector," said co-author Michael Kitson, Associate Professor in International Macroeconomics and Director of the MBA Programme at Cambridge Judge.

"Developing new technologies are, of course important, but the survey shows that a focus only on technology risks businesses and universities alike missing out on organisational and other business-related activities that benefit companies across the UK."

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Interactions between UK businesses and universities are broad-based and beneficial, but are being held back by firms' lack of capacity and information to tap this key resource, says a new report co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School.

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Cambridge and LMU announce plans for strategic partnership

sjr81 — Tue, 29 May 2018 12:21:47 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) put pen to paper on a memorandum of understanding that will see the two institutions forge ever-closer links in education and research across a broad range of disciplines in the Sciences, Humanities and Medicine.

Senior leaders from Cambridge and LMU – which boast nearly 150 Nobel Laureates between them – came together over two days in Cambridge for meetings led by both the President of LMU, Professor Bernd Huber, and Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope.

At the conclusion of the visit, officials from Cambridge and LMU signed the memorandum of understanding, which indicates the desire to develop a joint programme of strategic importance to both institutions. A full programme will be formulated by the end of the year, with a formal launch expected to take place in early 2019.

It is intended that the partnership will include joint research activities, the exchange of academic staff, postdoctoral and PhD candidates, as well as masters and undergraduate students, joint teaching initiatives, and training for the next generation of scholars. ̽��ֱ��partnership will be cross-disciplinary, covering broad areas in the Humanities and Cultural Studies, Law, Economics and Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, as well as Medicine, and will develop over the course of an initial five-year funding period.

Professor Chris Young, Head Elect of the School of Arts and Humanities, and Cambridge’s academic lead for the strategic partnership, said: “ ̽��ֱ��LMU is Germany's leading university in Germany's leading city.

“Its outstanding scholarship and rich network of associated institutes and industrial partnerships make it the perfect bridge to Bavaria, Germany and Europe. There are already myriad collaborations between colleagues at both universities, and this exciting new partnership will intensify and augment these for years to come.”

Professor Thomas Ackermann, Dean of the Faculty of Law and LMU’s Director for the strategic partnership, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is one of the world’s leading institutions in education, learning, and research. ̽��ֱ��strategic partnership between our universities will pave the way towards a new level of cooperation. Together with my colleague, Chris Young, we will explore an interesting array of activities to ensure the program will be a great success for both universities.”

Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, said: “No single institution can provide, on its own, the answers to the great challenges of these turbulent times. Collaboration and openness to the world are essential to achieving our academic and civic missions. Our partnership with LMU, one of Europe’s finest universities, creates exciting opportunities to work together to address tough issues and provide our students with a richer education.”

“ ̽��ֱ��strategic partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, one of the leading universities in Europe and the world, will bring an exciting stimulus to research and learning at LMU,” said LMU President Professor Bernd Huber. “Our new partnership ensures that collaboration and exchange which are vital for academic innovation can continue to be pursued regardless of Brexit.”

Two of Europe’s leading research universities have announced the first step towards plans for a unique ‘strategic partnership’ – underlining the vital and ongoing relationship between British universities and their peer institutions across the EU in a post-Brexit landscape.

Collaboration and openness to the world are essential to achieving our academic and civic missions.

Stephen Toope

Nick Saffell/ ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

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Cambridge and Indian partners launch collaboration to transform India’s "Green Revolution”

ag236 — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 09:58:15 +0000

̽��ֱ��adoption of modern methods and new technologies in agriculture that propelled India to self-sufficiency in grain production in the second half of the 20th century is known as the country’s “Green Revolution”. It allowed India to overcome poor agricultural productivity, especially in regions like the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, although it relied on overuse of water, fertilisers and pesticides.

Today, climate change, continuing population growth and the rapid process of urbanisation have put added pressure on India’s ability to feed its population. TIGR2ESS – an acronym for “Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies” – is a £7.8 million programme funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) to develop more resilient, equal and diverse food systems in India. It aims to define the requirements for a second more sustainable Green Revolution, and to deliver this through a suite of research programmes, training workshops and educational activities

̽��ֱ��TIGR2ESS launch event took place in the context of a three-day workshop that brought together all the UK and India partners to discuss and finalise a plan for the programme’s effective implementation.

TIGR²ESS will support 14 postdoctoral researchers employed at partner research institutions and universities across India, as well as eight post-doctoral research associates from collaborating institutions in the UK

̽��ֱ��programme will create 3-year research opportunities for a total of 22 early-career researchers in the UK and India, and also promote academic exchanges at all levels in laboratories across India and the UK.

One of TIGR²ESS’ objectives is to foster mutually beneficial knowledge exchange and collaborative research through workshops in Cambridge and India. In addition, it will deliver a programme of outreach, education and entrepreneurship. In doing so, TIGR²ESS will help strengthen Indian research capacity in key areas of the food system, and will contribute to the development of smart agriculture in India.

At the heart of the TIGR2ESS proposal are a series of Flagship Projects tackling fundamental research questions, and addressing the associated social issues facing farmers in the context of increasing urbanisation and climate change.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “TIGR²ESS will inform best practice in crop development and growth. It will allow greater genetic understanding of crop resilience to drought and disease. It will contribute to more effective use of scarce water supplies. It will build capacity and foster education.”

“It will empower women and entrepreneurs, and encourage innovation along the food supply chain. It will create opportunities for early-career researchers, and in doing so will contribute to India’s efforts to ensure it is able to meet the needs of its growing population. I am delighted that Cambridge is a part of this extraordinary initiative.”

Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary of India’s Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology, added: “"India is a diverse country, and negotiating this diversity is the key to developing any interventions. ̽��ֱ��TIGR²ESS programme takes into account this diversity, and that will define its success. We need to take a holistic view at the nexus between agriculture, environment, water, climate, energy and health. Assessing the impact of technology applications or interventions in a larger setting is very important."

Presenting TIGR²ESS, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Professor Howard Griffiths, the programme’s principal investigator, said: “This unprecedented programme of joint activities will enable capacity building both in the UK and India, and shape the policy needed to define a second Green Revolution for India.”

“TIGR²ESS will address the challenges identified by our colleagues in India, and translate research outcomes to build agriculture systems that support sustainable livelihoods, enhancing the well-being and health of rural communities with a particular focus on improving the opportunities for equality, female empowerment and youth employment, and market-led entrepreneurial opportunities.”

Daniel Shah, Director, Research Councils UK (RCUK) India, said “TIGR²ESS is a great example of the UK and the Indian research teams partnering to address issues around food security and agriculture systems. This initiative also aligns with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to double farmers’ income by 2020."

Researchers met in New Delhi today to formalise the launch of a programme that aims to jointly address some of India’s most pressing food security challenges.

This unprecedented programme of joint activities will enable capacity building both in the UK and India, and shape the policy needed to define a second Green Revolution for India.

Prof Howard Griffiths

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Cambridge and Sciences Po to enhance collaboration

ag236 — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 12:09:54 +0000

At a ceremony held in Paris on Friday November 24th, representatives from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and from Sciences Po signed a Memorandum of Agreement to formalise and strengthen the partnership between both institutions.

̽��ֱ��stated aim of the document is to develop research links in disciplines including Politics, History and Public Policy, with a strong expectation that the collaboration will develop to encompass other areas of mutual interest.

Covering an initial three-year period, the agreement includes the provision of matched funds by Cambridge and Sciences Po to enable academic workshops and symposia, and to pay for travel grants, short-term research visits, and visiting professorships at both Sciences Po and Cambridge.

Other bilateral activities within its scope include the encouragement of student mobility, and access for Cambridge PhD students to the Sciences Po Teaching Fellowships programme at Sciences Po campuses in Reims, Menton or Le Havre, where lectures are done in English.

One specific outcome of the agreement between Cambridge and Sciences Po will be the organisation of a public conference on “ ̽��ֱ��Future of Europe”, to be held in Paris in 2018, and led by specialists in European studies from both institutions.

Signing on behalf of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations, said: “This Memorandum of Agreement builds on strong existing relationships between our two world-leading universities. It offers us a formal mechanism to strengthen our partnership at a time when collaboration between academic institutions is more crucial than ever before.”

Mr Frédéric Mion, President of Sciences Po, said: “There is a need to maintain and deepen cooperation among excellent academic institutions in Europe. It is the right time to continue strengthening our ties with a world-class ̽��ֱ�� such as Cambridge by developing jointly this innovative and ambitious research partnership in the social sciences. ̽��ֱ��Memorandum of Agreement is built on that firm conviction. ”

Sciences Po was founded in 1872 as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques to educate the French governing class in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. Today it is one of France’s leading research universities in the social sciences and humanities. It has seven campuses across France, and a record of excellent research in law, economics, history, political science and sociology.

Agreement will enable closer research ties and funding of joint projects

Sciences Po-Cambridge agreement

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Opinion: We need to break science out of its ivory tower – here's one way to do this

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 10:52:33 +0000

Without hardware, there is no science. From Hooke’s microscope to the Hubble telescope, instruments are modern science’s platforms for producing knowledge. But limited access to scientific tools impedes the progress and reach of science by restricting the type of people who can participate in research, favouring those who have access to well-resourced laboratories in industrial or academic institutions.

Scientists in developing countries, grassroots community organisations, and citizen scientists can struggle to obtain and maintain the equipment they require to answer their own research questions.

̽��ֱ��result of this exclusion from participation is that scientific research becomes ever more elitist as a small number of people decide what the worthwhile and valid projects are. For example, the relative neglect of many tropical diseases and agricultural research on African subsistence crops demonstrates that local concerns in areas with limited scientific resources are often not sufficiently addressed by global science.

Likewise, public concerns and desire for transparency around technology can also be ignored. Research on fracking has received $137 million from the United States Department of Energy. But despite vocal concerns about water pollution, no affordable technologies have been developed for communities to use to monitor their own air or water, even though access to the relevant data from industry is difficult. Locking science inside ivory and industry towers restricts what it can look like.

Open hardware

̽��ֱ��open science hardware movement challenges these norms with the goal of providing different futures for science, using hardware as a launching point. It argues that plans, protocols and material lists for scientific instruments should be shared, accessible and able to be replicated. ̽��ֱ��fact that a lot of modern scientific equipment is a consumer product that is patented, not supplied with full design information and difficult to repair also blocks creativity and customisation.

For example, open source project Oceanography for Everyone recently crowdfunded an open conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) instrument out of frustration with the lack of low-cost instrumentation available. CTD instruments are the workhorses of oceanography research, and usually cost thousands of dollars. Oceanography for Everyone’s model achieves comparable data but costs US$300 to build, and the plans are public on GitHub. Think of OpenCTD like a really nice shirt. You could buy one for $40, or if you don’t have enough money but you do have a sewing pattern and some time, you could purchase the fabric for $5 and make it yourself, and even customise it to your needs and tastes.

Lower cost is only one goal of open science hardware. CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, pioneered an Open Hardware License to enable large-scale, open collaboration on projects. One of these, White Rabbit, is an electronic controller for precise synchronisation of signals across vast distances. White Rabbit ensures that some of the world’s largest particle accelerators are coordinated. But it’s also freely available to anyone, and has found new uses in designing smart electricity grids.

Members of CLEAR using hand tools to repair an open science hardware trawl (LADI trawl) for monitoring marine plastics. MEOPAR

Equality or equity?

Instruments such as OpenCTD and White Rabbit are built on the premise of equality, the idea that everyone should have access to scientific tools. Yet the ability to access such tools is only half the story: it doesn’t address the acute disparities in who is creating science in the first place. And these are enormous. In 2015, ̽��ֱ��Guardian reported that Africa produces just 1.1% of global scientific knowledge. And recent data from UNESCO indicates that only 28% of researchers globally are women. Women do not represent 50% of scientists in a single country in the world.

Attempting to address this problem, several feminist laboratories create and use open science hardware. For example, the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) is a feminist marine pollution lab in Newfoundland, Canada. And the GynePunks are a group of bio-hackers at the forefront of DIY gynaecology, based in Barcelona.

These labs are not merely bringing more women and trans scientist-inventors into science-as-usual. They prioritise equity rather than equality, recognising that when people start from fundamentally different social, economic, educational and political positions, treating everyone the same does not overcome those differences. In doing so, they transform science in terms of how research priorities are chosen and articulated, what kinds of knowledge is considered valid, and, of course, how scientific tools are made and distributed.

Equality vs. Equity. Interaction Institute for Social Change. Artist: Angus Maguire. CC BY 2.0

Beyond the lab

Particularly valuable work is being done by groups attempting to move science out of the lab and into places and frameworks where it would not usually occur.

For example, Public Lab is a US-based environmental science community founded by frustrated citizens on the Gulf Coast following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in 2010. Getting accurate, timely and public high resolution data about local damage was impossible due to flight restrictions over the spill area and satellites are too far away to provide the same level of detail. So citizen scientists stitched together photos from cheap cameras suspended from helium balloons. ̽��ֱ��tools are open and accessible, and the research is done by and for local people without science degrees.

Public Lab volunteers mapping the Deep Horizon oil spill using a low-cost weather balloon setup that is openly documented on the Public Lab wiki. Jeff Warren/Flickr

Likewise, the work of Lifepatch, an Indonesian citizen initiative in art, science, and technology which uses low-cost methods and open tools such as webcam microscopes, is deeply rooted in Indonesian collective culture. ̽��ֱ��questions of basic, daily life and everyday needs have driven projects with local communities on river water quality, bio-recovery of soils altered by volcanic eruptions and safe fermentation practices in collaboration with local academics.

All of these projects demonstrate the value of science grounded in specific places, complex local traditions, ethics, contexts and research questions, rather than a universal science that works the same everywhere for everyone. We need to push science towards communal, bottom-up, and collaborative practices; away from territorial, proprietary, institutional, Western-dominated and individualistic practices.

This has significant implications for where science happens, who is involved, and as a result, the types of knowledge that can be produced. Open science hardware is about creating new futures for science.

Max Liboiron, Professor of Geography and Environmental Science, Memorial ̽��ֱ�� of Newfoundland and Jenny Molloy, Coordinator, Synthetic Biology Strategic Research Initiative, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Science doesn't work the same for everyone everywhere - there are huge disparities in access to scientific hardware, and in gender and minority representation in labs. In this piece from ̽��ֱ��Conversation, Jenny Molloy (Department of Earth Sciences) and Max Liboiron (Memorial ̽��ֱ�� of Newfoundland) look at some of the initiatives around the world which are attempting to level the playing field for scientists.

US Food and Drug Administration

Stem Cell Research

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