How can data foster university-industry partnerships?

Collaboration between universities and industry has long been a driving force for innovation and impact. However, universities are often seen by the external world as ‘black boxes’—so much groundbreaking research happens behind closed doors, making it difficult for potential partners to discover opportunities for collaboration. Without visibility into ongoing research activities, industry and external organisations may never realise the potential for partnership, missing out on valuable collaborations that could drive innovation and impact.

As global challenges demand stronger knowledge exchange between academia and industry, universities are increasingly turning to digital solutions to improve research visibility and partnership readiness.

Bridging the visibility gap with researcher profiles

One of the biggest barriers to university-industry collaboration is finding the right people behind the research; universities often struggle to maintain a clear picture of what their researchers are working on and who they’re collaborating with. For external organisations looking to partner with a university or access specialised equipment, the size and complexity of institutions can be overwhelming — searches either return an unmanageable number of results or lead to dead ends.

Keeping researchers’ public profiles up to date is therefore crucial to help universities become partnership ready. In order to gain a clear picture of this, they need to capture research information, and utilise it effectively. Many universities have started leveraging automated research profiling systems, such as Symplectic Elements, to capture and maintain real-time data on researcher expertise, collaborations, and outputs. These platforms ensure that academics remain discoverable to external partners, reducing the barriers to initiating collaboration.

For example, some universities have indicated that public researcher profile pages are often their most effective tool for attracting new partnership inquiries—sometimes even outperforming direct institutional outreach efforts. When maintained effectively, these digital profiles act as the ‘front door’ to universities, ensuring that industry, policymakers, and external organisations can engage with the right expertise at the right time.

Making research facilities more accessible to industry

While people are central to collaboration, infrastructure also plays a crucial role. Universities house state-of-the-art facilities and equipment that could be of immense value to industry partners—if they knew they existed. From advanced imaging labs to high-performance computing clusters, research institutions often have resources that could drive innovation in industry sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to manufacturing.

Symplectic’s research infrastructure management tools help universities build detailed inventories of their research facilities. These inventories don’t just list equipment—they provide insight into capabilities, availability, and potential applications, making it easier for industry partners to identify resources that align with their needs. By structuring data in a way that speaks to external audiences, institutions can position themselves as willing partners rather than standalone research hubs.

Case Study: The Ohio Innovation Exchange

For example, The Ohio Innovation Exchange (OIEx), a state-led initiative, set out to connect Ohio’s universities with industry partners to drive regional economic development. With over 10 universities involved, the challenge was making thousands of researchers’ expertise, patents, and research outputs accessible to businesses.

To bridge this gap, OIEx leveraged Symplectic’s data infrastructure to build the OIEx platform, centralising data from multiple institutions into a searchable database of more than 10,000 researcher profiles. This allowed industry partners to easily identify experts, explore university resources, and initiate partnerships—bridging the gap between academia and industry and supporting the state’s broader innovation goals.

Looking ahead

As digital tools evolve, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a powerful enabler for research translation. Another challenge in university-industry engagement is that academic research is often written in highly technical language, making it difficult for industry partners to interpret and act upon.

This is the next frontier of research visibility—not just making research discoverable, but making it understandable and actionable for industry. AI-powered research classification tools, such as large language models (LLMs), are now being explored to automate the translation of academic outputs into industry-friendly summaries. By structuring research data in a way that is more accessible to non-academic audiences, these technologies have the potential to broaden the reach of university research and accelerate collaboration opportunities.

As universities look to strengthen their role as drivers of innovation, the ability to embrace data-driven strategies to support university-industry engagement, whether through automated researcher profiles, structured research inventories, or AI-powered research translation, is becoming increasingly important. This aligns with insights from Symplectic’s recent white paper, Catalyzing Collaboration: How Research Information Management Systems Drive Academic-Industry Partnerships, which highlights how institutions that take a data-driven approach better position themselves for collaboration and see greater success in building long-term industry partnerships.

The next generation of university-industry partnerships will be shaped by openness, connectivity, and the intelligent use of data. By leveraging these tools, universities can open up the ‘black box’ and position themselves as proactive engines of innovation, ready to tackle global challenges in partnership with industry.

Ready for more?

The collaboration between university and industry has emerged as a powerful catalyst for research impact and innovation. Our report brief, Why impactful research needs university-industry collaboration, explores the benefits, challenges, and actionable recommendations for universities, industry partners, and policymakers to strengthen collaboration between universities and industry.

This article is based on an interview with Jonathan Breeze, Executive VP, Academic Markets, Digital Science at Symplectic, and written in partnership with Symplectic.

Tasha Day (author) is a Project officer at UIIN, where she undertakes research activities and creates content on a wide variety of topics including entrepreneurship education, sustainability and research valorisation.