Marie Curie Conference Pisa 2005

1. Parallel session 3
industry – academia
report
Christina Meskers
Maria Bostenaru Dan
Roman Wencel

2. Main points from the invited
speaker
• „the US do not have all answers“
• Competition
– Universities do not compete with each other
– Business do
• Time dimension
– Age of Unis (US, Europe)
• Role of Unis: elite / mass
• Funding of Unis: governamental / private
Why should we change now?

3. Main points from the invited
speaker
• Strategy needed in order to change:
– Qualities necessity
1.Willigness to take risk
2.High quality skills
3.Speak Australian / Canadian (English)
• Unit of measure for success:
– employment in governement / private sector
• Sense of difference after mobility, which bears
exciting challenges
• Europe (and the US) shall not get `asleep`

4. Questions (and answers)
1. Funding
• L. Cox: Yes, yes, yes privatisation; tuition
• Tuition is not really the answer, autonomy is, and to chose
the students
2. Social sciences
• L. Cox: Will be governamental (traditional values of family,
church, neighbourhood; support in disasters)
3. Employment problems
• What are we going to do with the highly trained MCFs in
Europe (not the US)

5. Strategy
(topics for reflection)
• What is the objective?
• How to define different roles
– Partners: academia - industry (PPP?)
– EU / national / local
• Equip for better employability
• Shall we invest more in risk, in languages
• Main problem between academia – industry is
the salary; other methods of financing with
autonomous universities

6. Parallel session 3
interdisciplinarity of research
report
Maria Bostenaru Dan
Roman Wencel

7. Main points from the speakers
• Difference of mentality industry-academia
• Location is not important
• Society and conferences
• Pisa: grouping in schools
• Higher interdisciplinarity at PhD level
– At masters level there is
– At post-doc level there is a lack of schemes of structured training (which
exist at national, EU etc level) – need to follow up in the same scheme
– Throughout the whole career (until retirement) … lifelong training
• Longer post docs in interdisciplinary positions (2+1) better
employability for both sectors
• Specialist and systemist (interdisciplinary) ?

8. Questions (and answers)
1. Industry has expensive equipment which can
be used for research without having
universities to buy it (short term intersectorial
move); joint supervision
2. Shall all fields be present at the same
geographical location
3. Duration of education
4. Specialist and interdisciplinary working are
equally needed

9. Strategy
(topics for reflection)
• How can the commission support mentality change at
universities – the framework programme is a huge
instrument to have an impact (people don‘t change
with new programmes
• Sandra Aresta – an in and out industry-academia
intersectorial mobility similar to geographical mobility
Is location important ?
• These are the needs, but what is the answer of the big
funding body?
• More possibilities to ask for an own team – what kind
of mechanisms
• Promote interdisciplinarity also in employment – that
might succeed better in a team