Knowledge Transfer Secondments - University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is sending researchers out of the lab and into companies, and bringing industry staff back in, to turn EPSRC-funded discoveries into usable products and processes. This matters because a fundamental research finding—a new material, a better algorithm, a more efficient chemical reaction—often sits in a university department, unpublished and unexploited, long after the grant ends. The people who understand it best are the researchers themselves. Moving them temporarily into a user organisation (a manufacturer, a software firm, a utility) is a direct way to transfer that tacit knowledge. The same logic applies in reverse: an industry scientist can bring a practical problem into the university and work on it alongside academic colleagues. If this succeeds, the impact is not a single breakthrough but a faster pipeline from lab to real-world use. A new battery chemistry might reach a factory floor months sooner. A more efficient water-treatment catalyst could be tested in a treatment plant rather than a beaker. The scheme also builds lasting personal networks between academia and industry, which continue to generate collaborations long after the secondment ends.