Core Technologies for Education and Innovation in Life Sciences

The importance of improving knowledge transfer between research institutions and third parties, including industry, was identified by the European Commission as one of ten key areas for action in the broad-based innovation strategy to implement the Lisbon Agenda. This demands a profound re-orientation in the interaction between academy and industry to maximise the social and economic benefits of implementing new research ideas in the market.In this landscape, education and training activities fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among research professionals would markedly contribute to the reduction of the cultural gap which exists between academia and industry. To this purpose, research & innovation staff needs to be provided with basic knowledge transfer and business skills.Within innovative research institutions, core facilities are important research infrastructures, providing access to advanced instrumentation and technologies operated by experts. Importantly, core facilities provide opportunities to be hubs of innovation as they enable: i) sharing of ideas and expertise on a specific cutting-edge technology across several research topics; ii) convergence of academic research and specific industrial demands as core facilities provide their services not only to principal internal investigators but also to external company users; iii) training diverse stakeholders (including MSc and Ph.D. students, post-docs and principal investigators) on advanced technologies. However, the core facilities’ tremendous potential in innovation has not been fully deployed yet. Therefore, there is a timely need to develop: i) innovative partnerships to design training that will provide core technologies expertise together with an entrepreneurial mindset; ii) activities that will enable the creation of a robust network between core facilities and companies as well as shared practices for knowledge transfer.In order to address these needs, we have a created a strategic partnership, named InnoCore, which mix together research and higher education institutions together with experts on innovation, knowledge transfer and acceleration of business in the biotech industry. The consortium is well integrated by associated partners representing EU-wide networks and biomedical industry that will ensure engagement of companies in the implementation of project activities.The overarching aim of this partnership is to create a curriculum and qualification path on both cutting-edge core technologies and innovation management, through blended education and project-based collaboration with industry, in the framework of the innovation-enabling context of core facilities in academia.This goal will be achieved through: i) joint development among all participants of teaching modules on core technologies, featuring blended education and innovative certification of competences; ii) integration of the curriculum with innovative practices for knowledge transfer and innovation management; iii) creation of a platform for collaboration among participant research institutions and companies that will lead to the establishment of a sustainable development path for the entire community of stakeholders.Overall, InnoCore will address topics that are relevant to i) development of innovative learning and teaching practices; ii) transnational delivery of courses; iii) increased the mobility of students and staff across core facilities at different sites and between research institutions and industry; iv) education on knowledge transfer; v) fostering the innovation potential of core facilities.Through successful achievement of its goal, InnoCore will address the needs of MSc and PhD students, postdocs, researchers and professionals working in academic and non-academic research infrastructures. Specifically, it will provide training opportunities to these target groups in i) increasing their entrepreneurial mindset; ii) training highly skilled professionals capable of boosting the innovation processes; iii) improving their employability beyond the academic career as well as their self-employability (i.e. start-up creation).