Event report

My life seems hectic enough with my full-time research, voluntary commitments, blogging and science writing... So is it really a good idea for me to enter the prestigious BiotechYES Challenge as part of a team from the University of Sheffield? But I just cannot resist such a good opportunity! The challenge of this competition is to come up with an idea for a novel biotechnologically based product or service and draw up a business plan to pitch to a panel of industry experts.

We will work with this cohort of trainees for a total of 12 contact days, complemented by ongoing assignments and online support, mainly through the We Chat platform which is hugely popular in China.  The first training block focussed on innovation and intellectual property.  Later blocks will focus on valuations; business plans; financial planning and building an investment case; contracts; negotiation.

The Conference brought together representatives from higher education, the arts, cultural and creative sectors and the wider worlds of policy and business under the theme; Culture, Creativity and the Academy: Exploring the New Normal.

The Conference explored whether partnerships between the Arts, Cultural and Creative industries and Higher Education are becoming the ‘new normal’ and, if so, what such a new normal looks like and why is it important. Sessions throughout the day covered themes including:

With opportunities for networking, meeting with experts, as well as talking to exhibitors representing venues and suppliers from the UK and beyond, it's time well spent away from the office. The Tube strike unfortunately meant that attendee numbers were lower than usual on the final day, so there wasn't the same buzz as in previous years, however despite this it was still an extremely valuable day.

This was a great course - by half-way through, I'd almost reconsidered my chosen career in favour of jumping ship for technology transfer, thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of both delegates and trainers.

By the end, I had a new appreciation for the scope and complexity of the role. Phil Elstob, Course Director and Business Development Executive for Cancer Research Technology and Newcastle University co-ordinated a lively three days of discussion and learning.

One of the interesting aspects of the Malaysian academic system is that there are very few post-docs. 

Qualified people tend to go straight into academic positions in the growing university sector.  This affects the innovation culture. There are substantial efforts into creating an innovation culture as early as possible in the wider education sector, even in primary schools.

Tamsin was providing context for local activities since the main purpose of KnowledgeLondon is to allow practitioners of technology transfer and knowledge exchange to talk about their day-to-day experiences of working with companies and academics: attracting the former and incentivising the latter to bring about fruitful engagements.

Interestingly, the conversations centred much more around academic engagement with technology transfer than around commercial engagement – perhaps reflecting recent pressures around impact activity created by the REF.

The report The nature, scale and beneficiaries of research impact  launched at a conference hosted by HEFCE at the Royal Society. This report provides an initial assessment of the 6,679 non-redacted impact case studies that were submitted to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). A novel mix of text-mining techniques and qualitative analysis was used to synthesize the corpus of case studies.

The event was organised by the British Council and Universities Australia and was attended by nearly 100 delegates from the US and Australasia. 

This event shared case studies and best practices from different innovation centres (including Catapults) and their local partners, and it was encouraging to see the wide spread of activity.

The event was delivered in partnership with NCUB and Rosa Fernandez, Director of Research, did the closing keynote on how universities are working with Catapults. A key message from this event was that Catapults are just part of the range of collaborative R&D mechanism, and there are many routes to success.