After a tumultuous year, we wanted to create a centralised archive for all of our developments, achievements and lessons learnt from 2020. This year we had over 2,400 new technologies submitted to the platform and initiated almost 1,300 new introductions between teams in academia and industry! From our COVID-19 Call for Research to a new webinar series, we’ve continued to broaden our horizons, and we’ll be hitting the ground running in January with new product features, a brand refresh, and new ways to drive impact from commercialisation.

Highlights Directory:

• COVID-19 Call for Research
• 2020 Webinar Series
• Case Studies
• Insights Blog & Press
• Monthly Bulletin Repository

We called and you answered

In March, we launched an open call for research to anyone in academia working on COVID-19 related research and interventions. We had a fantastic response from our community with 237 submissions that we proactively and strategically matched to relevant R&D teams across our global industry network. We have helped to start 62 new conversations between industry R&D and universities on their COVID-19 technologies, which cover everything from treatments, to detection systems and vaccines.

Read the update from our Communications Manager about how we helped mobilise the university-industry community against COVID-19.

You can also browse all of the COVID-19 technologies submitted by universities to IN-PART and view the announcement we made in March.

Catch up on this year’s webinars

This year we ran seven webinars to help support our university-industry community. Over 1,500 people signed up to watch our live events, which included three panel discussions, as well as presentations from our Founders and members of our team.

Follow us on Twitter to keep updated on our next round of webinars in the new year!

Case studies and collaborations

We have seen a huge variety in the types of outcomes from conversations beginning through IN-PART. We have enjoyed hearing about your experiences for several new case studies this year, including the University of Warwick securing an exclusive global licensing deal with a leading agricultural company, and hearing how the University of Southern Denmark have informed their strategy with the industry feedback and engagement metrics.

IN-PART in the news

Many of our team have written guest articles and blogs this year covering many important topics. From the importance of early-career researchers in commercialisation to the race for the first COVID-19 vaccine, we’ve had some fantastic articles published this year.

You can see the full list below, or check out our Insights blog for more features:

Best practices, insights and top innovations

20 Top innovations for 2020

What do R&D teams need to see in a technology disclosure?

Best practices for academic engagement: Q&A with Durham University

Top tips for engaging academics with industry collaboration

Press + guest articles

60% of UK unis expect Brexit to affect pharma industry relationships

Multilateralism vs nationalism in race to provide vaccine

A guide to university-industry collaboration for early career researchers

Updates and developments

Takeda launch five RFPs with Discover to fund new academic research

The importance of technology transfer during COVID-19

2020 bulletin repository

Each month our universities team publish an email bulletin to highlight upcoming events, dashboard developments, and new articles and case studies of interest to the technology transfer and university communities. If you missed one of our emails this year you can go back through all of our bulletins below:

January: What are companies interested in?

February: What are healthcare technology R&D teams interested in?

March: COVID-19 Announcement: Call For Research

April: Join our webinar: What do R&D teams want to see in a technology disclosure?

May: It’s webinar season!

June: New webinars, website plug-in, COVID-19 survey

July: New dashboard features: Interactions module, Discover responses, website integration

August:  New dashboard feature; Upcoming panel discussion; COVID-19 response

September: Live Q&A w/ CSL; New case study; COVID-19 editorial

October: Live Q&A w/ TTO panel; Collaboration news; A case study in academic engagement

November: Top tips for academic engagement; Advice for early career researchers; New case study

December: Highlights from 2020: mobilising collaboration

Written and edited by Ruth Kirk and Alex Stockham. Formatting by Ruth Kirk.

Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2021: ‘2020 content highlights: mobilising university-industry collaboration’

About IN-PART:

We believe brilliant connections can solve real-world problems. We match research pioneers from academia with decision-makers in industry sectors striving for a greater positive impact.

Our goal is to enable connections from around the world to match academic research with industry on a level playing field. Through our intelligent, matchmaking platform we showcase leading university innovations and connect academics with an international community of decision-makers in industry, creating meaningful dialogue and partnership.

IN-PART, a digital partnering platform for university-industry collaboration.

250+ universities and research institutes around the world currently showcase their research and innovation on IN-PART to find new collaboration partners in industry. R&D teams get free access to the platform (create an account here). There are no hidden costs and we don’t claim downstream success fees.

Discover, a bespoke scouting service for open innovation.

Through Discover, corporate R&D teams can leverage our extended academic network, which reaches multiple teams across 1,200+ universities and research institutes worldwide. In response to a specific research requirement or challenge, Discover enables R&D teams to identify new opportunities for commercialisation or to solicit proposals for new research.

Interested in speaking with our Discover team? Request a demo |  TTO or academic? Sign-up for weekly Discover

Image credit: Ruchindra Gunasekara / Unsplash Licence