The Dutch city where industry–academia collaborations flourish

Julie Gould discovers how the Dutch city of Eindhoven is breaking down barriers between academia and industry.Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands has a long history of partnering with local technology giants such as Philips Electronics and DAF Trucks, with support from city leaders.

This membrane, albeit metaphorical, is, in a way, a very real barrier to some people switching between careers. The differences in working cultures and environments make breaking through the barrier difficult. There's talk of improving research culture, but not reducing the hyper-expectations of researchers. So it will always be difficult for them to step aside and move.

There's a lot of legal restraints, how companies work, and how people working in the companies, what they can share, what they can talk about, you know, which makes it difficult, I think, for them to often, you know, to act freely with academics unless they trust them, unless the right agreements are in place to enable the communications and exchange of reagents to take place.

Technology giants like Philips Electronics and DAF were looking for a place where engineers could be trained up, ready to enter into the workforce with all the skills and knowledge they needed for the job.From the origin of the Eindhoven of University of Technology, from the very, say, backgrounds, working together with industry, reaching out to industry, having exchanges between staff, from industry, academia is in our blood, in our genes.

A lot of researchers from industry, which are teachers, professors at our university, they have assignments at our university.But, says Robert, there do need to be some boundaries set in place. Otherwise this collaborative environment wouldn't work. And the first of these is academic freedom.And of course, you work with industry, but autonomy is for us key.And we are publishing these results, whatever the outcome is.

Because at the end of the day, it's all about trust. It's about human interactions. It's reaching out to each other and being willing to share things and to be open.So how can other universities embrace this openness with the other sectors in order to allow for more porosity? Robert believes that biases need to be gotten rid of.

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