About SUPA Knowledge Exchange

SUPA’s Knowledge Exchange (KE) activity is focussed on supporting the generation of impact across SUPA’s seven themes. This includes public and policy engagement as well as economic impact, a set of case studies on SUPA’s KE activity and you can read about SUPA’s various KE mechanisms below.

Industrial placements of graduate students, postdocs and staff

Over 20 industrial placements have been supported to date, reported outcomes include new jobs, generation of IP, papers and conference talks, further collaboration, and increased industrial awareness.
 
SUPA supports placements through identification of candidates, management and administration, and in some cases funding.

Engagement in Horizon2020 and other EU R&D initiatives

We provide support for researchers collaborating with industry (particular Scottish SMEs) to engage in Horizon 2020 and other EU funding mechanisms, principally through the Scottish Funding Council’s Pools Engagement in European Research (PEER) Fund. By strategic use of the PEER fund, SUPA has supported a number of proposals and networking activities which have resulted in awards of over €4m total, bringing over £1m into Scotland, roughly split 1:3 university/SME.

Collaborative R&D activities with industry

Our community of over 1200 physicists undertake collaborative R&D with a variety of businesses, very often with the support of innovation funding such as Innovate UK awards, KTP, or funding council mechanisms such as the STFC Innovation Partnership Scheme.

Industry and SUPA’s Graduate Students and Postdocs

The focus of SUPA’s KE activity is the graduate school. and in this we include not only our PhD students but also our 400 plus postdocs. As well as the industrial placements mentioned above we work with industry through careers events, highlighting opportunities for physicists in a variety of career paths. 

Access to facilities and intellectual property

SUPA works with Interface in making Scotland’s specialist facilities available to industry. You can find out more about SUPA’s facilities on our facilities page.
 
Valuable intellectual property regularly emerges from physics research. You can find out more about intellectual property opportunities from SUPA’s university partners in the IP section.