Connecting Communities Across the Industry- Academic Divide
TMarcell Tessenyi (Blue Skies Space Ltd) and Jeronimo Bernard-Salas (ACRI-ST) report on a survey and new database to support industry-academia collaborations.
Read article in the fully formatted PDF of the Europlanet Magazine.
Synergistic relationships between academic and industrial communities can have enormous benefits, from enhancing the impact of projects by broadening the scope of innovation to opening up new opportunities in funding and career development. However, for many academics, knowing where to start when approaching industry engagement can be challenging.
The Europlanet Industry and Policy Teams sent out a survey in August 2021 to find out about the experiences and priorities of the planetary community in working with companies outside academia. Early results show an interest from the respondents in becoming involved in collaborations, but a perceived lack of opportunities for engagement and limited awareness on industry capabilities relevant to research.
The Industry Team, supported by Industry Officers across the 10 Europlanet Regional Hubs, is tasked with helping the Europlanet Society to foster industry-academic interactions through a set of networking events and online support tools, which include a large, pan-European industry database. With the help of the planetary community across Europe, a first version of the database is currently being completed.
The online database is designed to help planetary scientists find companies that could be relevant to their research areas, with filters allowing the selection of companies across ESA’s Technology Domains and per country. A preliminary version will be rolled out to a group of beta-testers in early 2022, with the release of the full database to the whole Europlanet community planned for the summer of 2022.
The database will also be of value to companies that are seeking visibility among the planetary science community of academics, either for specialised areas of expertise (partnerships, consultancies) or for potential recruitment opportunities.
The Europlanet Society would like to invite academics, researchers and companies to help expand the database. Please contact industry@europlanet-society. org for additional information or to provide details of companies that might be relevant for inclusion. https://bit.ly/EuroplanetIndustry
