Speaker
Description
Scientists live in an environment of other scientists, technical journals and complex equipment and often esoteric scientific interests. The economy, which generates wealth for the country, is run by industry people that are less interested in the curiosity of scientific discovery and more interested in solving practical problems and creating new products and processes. Governments are understandably interested in the huge investment in science leading to economic benefits in timescales that are measured in years not multiple decades. Therefore there is increasing pressure for scientists to address issues that may lead to higher value industrial outputs. One obvious way to facilitate this is to get scientists talking to industry and creating a connection between research and industry. Some grant applications require this. There are both advantages and risks in working with industrial partners. This talk with give a personal account of many years of working with industrial partners with some good experiences and some not so good experiences with observations of how to make it a rewarding scientific exercise and to avoid some of the potential pitfalls.
