University Innovation Officers Meet in Lund

Lund – On December 8, the European Spallation Source (ESS) hosted a workshop, as part of the BrightnESS project, entitled Collaborating with ESS and maximising the innovation potential: Best Practice Exchange for Innovation Officers at Swedish Universities.The event was initiated by the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research and invited to the workshop were Innovation Officers representing their respective universities.

David Edvardsson and Viktoria Mattsson, both Deputy Directors, Research Unit from the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research opened the workshop, with David Edvardsson underlining that the meeting should be in the spirit of joint collaboration and that ‘Lund will have two world leading facilities.’ From ESS Allen Weeks, Head of Communications, External Relations, and IKC Management presented the current status of ESS and timeline. Edward Mitchell, Head of Business Development Office, ESRF and Chris Bee, Head of Business Development, STFC both presented how to collaborate with industrial users from an academia and large research facility perspective.

After a coffee break and some mingling, Professor Henning Friis Poulsen, Danish Technological University (DTU), Physics Department presented the imaging Centre at DTU and was followed by Tomas Lundqvist, Life Science Director, Max IV who presented the needs and expectations from industrial users. The presentation part of the workshop finished with Uwe Sassenberg, Project Coordinator Science Link, DESY who gave an update of the BSR (Baltic Sea Region) funded project Science Link and how it is supporting industrial users of Research Institutions.

Maximising Innovation Potential

After the lunch buffet in Ljushallen at ESS, the workshop went into the second phase, which was an interactive discussion moderated by Roy Pennings, Project Manager of BrightnESS. This part of the discussion aimed to facilitate a best practice exchange for the Innovation Officers at Swedish universities or as Viktoria Mattsson said in the opening of the workshop: ’How, who, and where are questions that should be addressed today.’

The discussion was very open and all participants, including the invited speakers, jointly contributed to a constructive and positive dialogue on how the Innovation Officers could increase their understanding of ESS as well as formulating a strategy for their respective universities on how to maximise the innovation potential in their future collaboration with ESS.

The agenda, participant list as well as all presentations are available by following this link. (Please note that the formal invitation is in Swedish, while the agenda and presentations are in English).

Photo: A group picture with speakers and participants in the workshop taken in Ljushallen at ESS. Picture: ESS