Thanks to our unique membership of the Industrial Liaison Programme (we are the only university amongst around 300 bluechip firms), we have unprecedented access to the academic might of one of the World's top three universities.
The first meeting, at 8.30am, was with John Williams (pictured shaking hands with yours truly), Professor of Information Engineering at MIT.
John is originally from South Wales although he has been at MIT for over twenty years and currently runs the MIT Geospatial Data Centre, which is an "über laboratory" that consists of the MIT Auto-ID Laboratory, MIT Center for Grid Computing, and MIT Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory. It has had extensive large scale simulation experience to address the "Big Data Problem" that often plagues traditional off-the-shelf open source GIS platforms, and has collaborated with Sandia National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) on these large scale simulations.
We have invited John to visit some companies in Wales in two weeks time as there are certainly ways in which we can collaborate on a range of areas.
Next up was Dr Stephanie Worner of the Centre for Information Systems Research at the Sloan School of Management. it was a fascinating discussion as Stephanie's team conducts field-based research on issues related to the management and use of information technology (IT) in complex organisations i.e it is very much an applied research centre and there are certainly ways in which we can learn from her team about how to develop such an agenda in Wales.
We than had lunch with Georgia Campbell, who is the daughter of Professor Tony Campbell, formerly of Cardiff University and now running the Darwin Centre in Pembrokeshire. Georgina discussed her role in running MIT's Clean Energy Prize. established in 2008, it offers a grand prize of $200,000, with half coming from the U.S. Department of Energy and half from a regional utility. Over the past three years, more than 200 teams from more than 60 schools have competed, raising more than $65 million in additional funding. Georgia is also undertaking research into the use of prizes to stimulate regional and national innovation and we hope she will be able to work with us to develop such concepts in Wales next year.
The next meeting was with Luis Perez Breva, who runs the i-teams project. i-temas bring together leading university researchers with multi-disciplinary teams of the brightest students and experienced business mentors. The teams work together to investigate the commercial prospects of the researcher's new invention. Luis is currently running such a programme across several universities in Portugal and we believe the i-teams concept, if applied in this way, could be used across the University of Wales.
The innovation mission. for want of a better description, were then taken on a tour of MIT by Joost Bonsen, a great character who knew everything that there is to know about the history of the university, from how British radar research enabled MIT to grow during the Second World War to Frank Gehry's design for the Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences (pictured right) Its striking design—featuring tilting towers, many-angled walls and whimsical shapes—challenges much of the conventional wisdom of laboratory and campus building.
Finally, I skipped the last half an hour of the tour to visit the UKTI offices and to catch up with the team there. What we are hoping to do is to link Welsh companies into some incoming trade missions as well as enabling them to meet with relevant academics at MIT through the ILP initiative.
So, a busy day all round and an even busier one tomorrow, when the R&D Conference begins at 7.30am.
One thought to leave you with before I go and find a bowl of clam chowder.
The Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education launched the MIT Portugal programme back in 2006 to strengthen the country's knowledge base and international competitiveness through a strategic investment in people, knowledge and ideas.
If the Portuguese can do it, then why can't we in Wales?
