Exploring Opportunities: ITFoM Industry Day
The objective of the meeting was to develop the potential for innovation and cooperation between scientists and representatives of industry, with the latter including a particular focus on ITFoM’s industry partners and representatives of industry who have an interest in becoming involved with the consortium. The goal of bringing academia and industry closer together was successfully achieved by mapping the requirements of the ITFoM initiative and capabilities of industry during the concluding session. The meeting, chaired by Dr Adriano Henney, Virtual Liver Network, started with an introduction by Declan Kirrane, ISC Intelligence in Science, who placed the science-industry relationship in a broader European and global policy context. Prof Hans Lehrach, Coordinator of ITFoM and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genomics, and Dr Ralf Sudbrak, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genomics, outlined key milestones and characteristics of the ITFoM project. Markus Pasterk, International Prevention Research Institute, presented the initiative’s proposed governance structure. Subsequent to these presentations, a discussion was launched on the industry contribution to the ITFoM vision, focusing primarily on issues such as Intellectual Property and licensing. The afternoon session drew attention to numerous aspects of the ITFoM industry dimension. Dr Oskar Menceler, CEO Maxeler, and Dr Alan Payne, HealthSolve, focused on ICT, hardware and software for personalised human models. Dr Nigel Skinner, Agilent, presented new developments in technology for analytics, diagnostics and medical devices. Under the heading of “Pharmaceutical Industry”, Dr Nora Benhabiles, CEA, discussed an array of topics, ranging from the re-organisation of competence specialisation within Europe to the correlation of demand for medicines and key economic variables. Prof Angela Brand, Maastricht University, put the emphasis on public health and valorisation of genome-based technologies. These presentations were followed by an in-depth discussion of concrete strategies for cooperation between ITFoM and different sectors of industry. The tabular mapping of capabilities – what industry can contribute - and requirements – what ITFoM needs from Industry – was the consummate achievement of a productive day of academia-industry interactions.
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom