Reshuffled? Keep calm and KE on
9 Mar 2020
You probably won’t find many commentators worrying about the future of Knowledge Exchange (KE) following the Cabinet reshuffle and the move of the Universities Minister from BEIS to the Department for Education (DfE). Although its profile has risen in the last decade, KE is still a relative newcomer on the Higher Education (HE) block. Often misunderstood (do you mean Tech Transfer?), poorly judged (how many spin-outs do you have?), its institutional role (where does KE ‘sit’ in a university?) and external contributions unclear (what value does this activity create anyway?); KE has had to work hard to win respect.
The Refreshed PraxisAuril website
18 Feb 2020
PraxisAuril – Making a national asset of UK Knowledge Exchange
17 Feb 2020
The drive for university-business collaboration – of all shapes and sizes – has never been stronger as we look towards the next budget and the 2027 R&D target. While there is still Brexit uncertainty, we have a strong Government which is putting research and innovation at the heart of its policy programme.
TTO Opportunities
31 Jan 2020
Conferences and training events are an excellent way to meet peers, network and meet potential partners. Nevertheless, budgetary constraints is a common conversational topic to many of us who work at TTOs. We tend to have to prioritise which training programmes, conferences and meetings to attend yearly.
KEF – A Step Forward or a Missed Opportunity?
20 Jan 2020
Do the metrics proposed in the new Knowledge Exchange Framework represent a reliable way to measure university innovation, or will they lead universities up the wrong path? OUI’s Chief Operating Officer Adam Stoten discusses.
The Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) has finally arrived, or at least Research England has just published a report confirming the metrics to be used in the inaugural 2020 exercise, following a consultation process and pilot run in which Oxford participated. This represents a significant watershed event in terms of putting a spotlight on Higher Education Institution (HEI) Knowledge Exchange (KE) as a driver of value creation regionally, nationally and internationally. While there is much to celebrate about the fact that government recognises that this area is important and worthy of investment, some significant problems remain with the KEF metrics proposed.
Opportunity for Funding to Support Researchers Planning Future Spin-Outs in the area of Healthy Ageing
6 Dec 2019
UK SPINE is a knowledge exchange initiative supported by Research England’s Connecting Capabilities Fund seeking to improve health in old age.
There is a fund to support translational proof of concept activities for which all English HEIs are able to apply.
The University of Oxford has been challenged by its steering board to use these funds to help accelerate the formation of spin-out companies. They are therefore seeking to identify researchers who are considering spinning-out their research, but who could benefit from some additional research funding to accelerate the process. For example, this could be used to gather extra data or provide proof of concept in a laboratory setting.