Considering to collaborate

“Impact for a better society” is the central mission of Delft University of Technology. Building on an excellent scientific profile in science, engineering and design we offer knowledge-intensive, technology-driven solutions to societal challenges. These solutions are rooted in ground breaking research: research that makes us an attractive cooperation partner for other knowledge institutes, society and for businesses.

With this approach we are at interplay with the changing drivers at European, national and regional level. Horizon Europe and national topsector policies will be driven by societal missions and key enabling technologies (KETs). Within these missions and KETs lie opportunities for universities and businesses to engage and to set the scene for future society and future economy. However, this can only be achieved by long term mutual commitment. For this reason the focus within Horizon Europe and national funding schemes (NWO) will be increasingly on long term public private partnerships.

The aim of TU Delft is to grow TU Delft Campus as a public private innovation campus of great international importance. This can only be achieved by creating strong interactions with knowledge institutions, government organizations, larger businesses, SME’s, start-ups, scale-ups and investors.

As a publicly funded university TU Delft attaches great importance to the general principles according to which our projects are carried out. There are important considerations for industry to reflect upon when contemplating to initiate research projects with us. First of all, TU Delft has an obligation to disseminate knowledge to society. Therefore all research results of TU Delft must be made available for publication. Therein we adhere to the standards of scientific integrity1 as established by the VSNU. Second, as an academic institution TU Delft may not be restricted in its freedom to pursue research. We also have a societal obligation to train the next generation of inventors and innovators. Therefore, patent-protected project results shall always be available to TU Delft itself for teaching and academic research projects. Finally, at TU Delft Open Science is seen as an important way to spread TU Delft’s mission to deliver Science to Society. With Open Science we wish to make scientific knowledge accessible online, free of charge to all users. This way new ideas are spread faster and wider, which in turn lead to new research.

Examples of this approach can be seen in the generation of publicly available open source software, open access papers and MOOCs. But also in the establishment of open and collaborative ecosystems such as SAM|XL2 or RoboValley 3. In all this we do understand the need for proper protection of intellectual property to secure the correct and viable introduction of our ideas, findings and software into society. After all, open source software is useless to society when an incorrect license is applied. And no start-up or spin-off will survive long enough to bring a product to the market if these innovations are not cradled and protected by patent rights. Alongside the aforementioned means, we also bring inventions and findings into society by transferring the intellectual property rights to industry.

The speed of innovation has become essential for businesses to compete in a worldwide market. We believe that multi party collaborations are key in accelerating innovation. We invite businesses to join our community and collaborate on research and innovation with the TU Delft and parties in our TU Delft Campus ecosystem. Together we identify your research and innovation challenges and connect these challenges to our ecosystem of academics, students, corporates and entrepreneurs.

We deeply value our collaborations with industry, many of whom we have long-standing relations with deeply rooted in joint history. We are always open to welcome new partners, to explore new domains and establish new joint ventures, either through bilateral agreements or within the framework of, amongst others, Horizon Europe, national top sector funding, NWO and regional funding.

My final call to all of you is: Let’s cooperate to create future society and future markets and work in a joint effort on impact for a better society!

1 www.vsnu.nl/files/documents/Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity 2018.pdf 2 samxl.nl 3 robovalley.com