A Glance Ahead to the 2019 University-Industry Interaction Conference in Helsinki

On 18-20 June 2019, the annual University-Industry Interaction Conference will take place in  Scandinavia’s coolest city[1]. Highly ranked among the world’s most innovative cities and praised for its stellar higher education landscape, Helsinki offers a wide variety of sights to explore and invigorating activities to participate. This summer the University-Industry Interaction Conference is about to become one of such events. For 2019 conference edition, we united our forces with the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment to bring the conference participants the fusion of innovation science and practice. Let us explore what is awaiting you at our three-day learning, sharing and networking event this year.

Scientific track

The University-Industry Interaction Conference scientific tracks will highlight the range of topics around university-industry engagement through the academic research lens. The speakers in the scientific track will ignite the academic discussions on the barriers, enablers and motivators of the university-industry engagement, whether the close proximity of universities to innovation actors accelerates innovation per se, and help discover yet again the power of networking for initiating university-industry interaction. More to that, participants will try and pry into the future to see how to prepare potential employers and employees today.

Practitioner track

Through highlighting one’s substantive experiences and results from practical application and projects in the field, our expert practitioner speakers will invite the conference participants to  discuss the challenges of nurturing successful university-industry relationship and the role of higher education institutions in the regional ecosystem. The presentations from the tracks will additionally shed light on the importance of the human capital in the university-industry collaboration and the development of entrepreneurial skills among students and professionals at the university-industry interface.

Case Studies track

Annually, our conference speakers share the insights from their singular exemplary cases, addressing the peculiarities, mechanisms and factors for their success during the case studies track presentations. The international case studies will be centered around incubators and entrepreneurship centers together with their role in driving start-ups and scale-ups, smart specialization partnerships and, undoubtedly, successful cases of university-industry alliances.

Next Practice track and Poster Session

The Next Practice track will allow the conference attendees to dive into the world of future perspectives. Here, they will explore curriculum design and delivery tools for equipping students with the skills of tomorrow. A special focus will be given to scrutinizing the ways of teaching innovative skills to future workforce. Certainly, debates on the means and platforms for more efficient and measurable university-industry partnerships and better knowledge transfer will take place and spark off discussions. The new concepts and ideas will be visualized and presented (along with other posters) in the poster presentation sessions.

NEW: Industry Stream

Exclusively this year, the UIIN conference will offer its participants a special edition of track focused on the industry perspective – the industry stream. Representing some of the world’s largest multinationals, our industry panel speakers will be sharing their experience on the success factors and challenges in collaborating with universities.  In addition to the top tier companies such as Conti, ASML, ZEISS and Novartis, a variety of high-tech startups and SMEs will lead the discussion on the opportunities and the challenges in building effective, mutually beneficial and sustainable partnerships.

Workshops

This year the thematic range of the hands-on workshops, without exaggeration, is highly diverse, so everybody will find a topic of their interest and expertise. The topics include accreditation for entrepreneurial & engaged universities, sustainable entrepreneurship education, flexibility in teaching and learning in the life-long learning context, university and industry connectedness and graduate employability, and more.

The above-mentioned themes are not an exhaustive list of what the University-Industry Interaction Conference will offer. For a more detailed overview of the conference program, please, visit the conference program page and check our Keynote Speakers line-up.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to Helsinki, to our dedicated community of science and practice!

The registration for the conference is still open: click here

[1] GQ – Helsinki