NEWS On 16 January, Umeå University’s Industrial Doctoral School for Research and Innovation (IDS) is celebrating its first decade of successful activities with a large workshop with more than 50 participating doctoral students, supervisors and partner companies. The theme of the day is visions and aspirations about how research can be of public benefit in the future.
Anna Linusson Jonsson, Director of Företagsforskarskolan and Benkt Wiklund, coordinatior.
PhotoMattias Pettersson“IDS is an excellent format for research collaboration between Umeå University and external partners. During this 10-year period, we have had almost 70 doctoral students working together with 50 external partners which shows that this really is a successful concept for collaboration and it also builds up long-term relationships,” says Hans Adolfsson, vice-chancellor at Umeå University, who will lead off the day together with deputy vice-chancellor Dieter Müller.
The first round of industrial doctoral students were recruited in 2008 and last autumn, the sixth admission round kicked off eleven new projects in many different subject areas. Anna Linusson Jonsson, the director of IDS, has noticed that over the ten years that the doctoral school has been in operation, there has been an increase in interest from both researchers and the community.
“It is especially pleasing that the project proposals we receive today are more varied and come from many different fields. Initially, most of the doctoral projects focused on technology. Now we can also see how researchers, external parties and doctoral students collaborate closely to solve research questions,” says Professor Anna Linusson Jonsson, director of IDS at Umeå University.
On 16 January, researchers and industrial partners, alumni and doctoral students will come together to celebrate the 10-year jubilee with talks and a poster session. The purpose of the day is to talk about visions and aspirations about how research can be of public benefit in the future. There will also be refreshments and opportunities for socialising and open discussions.
“It’s important to celebrate and that’s exactly what this day is all about - a day which can generate many new ideas, discussions about research projects and a lot of energy. I have high hopes for the future; there is so much potential for research and development through collaboration with society. Personally, I hope that we are going to see many regional collaboration projects in the future, not least projects with a focus on future sustainability,” says Anna Linusson Jonsson.
IDS is an inter-faculty research school that is based on collaboration between Umeå University and an external organisation, for example, a company or a public-sector organisation.
IDS aims to promote collaboration with companies, foundations or public-sector organisations in order to strengthen research and development, increase the doctoral students’ employability, independence and innovative capacity, and increase knowledge and innovation in society.