Are you interested in enhancing your research prospects and outputs? Would you like to solve industrial, local or global challenges that will deliver benefits to society, the economy and the environment? Or understand how to commercialise your intellectual property?

If so, learning how to effectively engage and collaborate with external stakeholders (including industry, government, NGO’s, frontline practitioners, local communities) is crucial. This is Knowledge Exchange (KE) – the activity between universities and external partners to deliver commercial, environmental, cultural and societal benefits, and economic growth.

The university’s Knowledge Exchange Hub has launched its KE training programme for 2024 to help you do this in the most efficient and effective way. Undertaking KE activities can enable you to:

• Establish new mutually beneficial partnerships to accelerate your research ideas
• Access funding available for KE activities or receive payments from consultancy or licensing/spin out royalties
• Collaborate on projects with corporate businesses
• Co-author publications with external partners, which can lead to higher citation ratings, potentially giving you a higher h-index
• Open up opportunities for your students, including industrial placements
• Raise the profile of your research and the university
• Develop new ideas (intellectual property) into products and services that can be protected through patenting (or other forms of protection) then licensed to companies for a fee or spun out into a spin out company
• Achieve economic and societal impact with the outcomes potentially used in the next REF and KEF

The KE training programme includes sessions on ‘What is Knowledge Exchange and where do I start?’ through to more in-depth sessions on ‘How to identify a business and establish a business partnership’ and ‘What is Intellectual property commercialisation?’.

Each session will explain the process and benefits of engaging and the support available to academics/researchers.

Please note, all members of staff are welcome to attend for information purposes.

Find out more and book your place on the Knowledge Exchange Hub’s Training pages.