Knowledge Transfer Secondments - University of Southampton

The University of Southampton is paying for its researchers to temporarily work inside companies, and for company staff to work inside the university, to force research out of the lab and into real-world products. This grant addresses a stubborn gap in the UK innovation system: excellent fundamental research often stalls at the university gates because the people who did the work never meet the people who could use it. Traditional knowledge transfer—papers, reports, conferences—is slow and passive. Moving people instead of paper is faster and more effective, because tacit know-how, troubleshooting skills, and personal networks travel with the secondee. If this works, EPSRC-funded research at Southampton will reach users—manufacturers, software firms, engineering consultancies—months or years sooner than it otherwise would. The impact is not a single breakthrough but a faster pipeline from discovery to application, whether that means better medical devices, more efficient energy systems, or improved manufacturing processes. The scheme explicitly funds both outward secondments (academic to industry) and inward secondments (industry to academic), creating a two-way street that also brings real-world problems back into the university.