How can working in partnership with industry benefit you and your research?

Imperial has a strong track record of working with industry: the College has brought in more than £250m of industry research funding – around 15% of its total research funding – in the past five years.  

Why would you want to partner with industry? 

Industry research partnerships bring many benefits to your academic work: 

  • Create real-world solutions. Create impact by translating your research into real-world benefits. 
  • Access additional research funding. Industry partnerships can bring in research income, at a time when public funding for research is highly competitive.  
  • Widen your perspective. Working with industry partners helps you learn about real-world problems that need solutions, and helps you think about your research from an applied problem-solving perspective.  
  • Access resources, facilities and data. Businesses often have resources and equipment that you don’t have access to in your department, and often have proprietary data that can enhance your research.  
  • Scale up your research. Industry partnerships can fund extra postdocs, PhD students and facilities including equipment and infrastructure in your lab or department.  
  • Build your reputation. Successful industry collaborations can raise your profile as a problem-solver who gets results – with your partner, the wider industry, and beyond.  
  • Demonstrate your impact. Work you’ve done in partnership with industry can be used as impact case studies for REF and KEF.  
  • Create more opportunities. Once you’ve built a relationship of trust with a partner, they’ll look to you first for any further collaboration opportunities.  

Why does industry want academic partners?  

There are many reasons why industry wants to collaborate with Imperial academics like you.  

  • Return on investment. Academic expertise helps them develop new or improved products/services, better understand their existing ones, and improve their business outputs.  
  • Remain competitive. Outsourcing research helps them to accelerate innovation, and association with a global top-ten university enhances their reputation.  
  • Exposure to world-leading research. Imperial’s research is world-leading, and brings with it advanced facilities and multidisciplinary working.  
  • Access to talented students and researchers. As well as carrying out research and problem-solving, our academics often lead training centres and offer bespoke courses within companies.  
  • The Imperial ecosystem. As well as the expertise of individual academics, working with Imperial academics connects companies to a broad network of interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge and technology transfer, and cutting-edge innovation, including the White City Innovation District and our medical campuses.