 So good morning everybody and welcome Sorry, we have a slightly late start, but there was some delay done in security So it's a great pleasure to welcome you all here for what should definitely be a highlight of this annual meeting of the young champ of the new champions. This is a Distinguished a panel as you could have to discuss the issue of partnering for science and to look at how in particular The public sector can help and how universities themselves can help encourage industry to take the long-term view to support the universities in Providing a long-term research outlook Which will benefit industry and also to breed the next generation of the skilled workforce for industry So to what extent industry can help universities Do basic research and basic of course can mean fundamental or or more on the applied side But still a way away from the marketplace as well as developing the sort of character as well as the skills of young scientists In a way that's going to help industry So let me introduce our panel in the order in which they're going to speak with the way We're going to run this is that each of them will have a complimentary view about what's going on and what's needed We'll start with the people from university and then we will move on to those who are more in the public sector as you call it Professor Chor Chuan Tan who's the president of the National University of Singapore Professor Alice Gust who's president of Imperial College London Professor Steve Kang who's president of the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology Dr. Francis Collins who's director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Jing Hai Lai who's vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Commissioner Carlos Moerdos who's the commissioner for research science and innovation of the European Commission So that's a very distinguished panel We I hope we'll have time for some questions at the end. I've asked them to speak just for a few minutes each And then we'll Open up for some discussion So Professor Tan Good morning. I Would say that all around the world and certainly in Asia this very strong interest in promoting further and deeper engagement in industry and universities and in the course of this this discussion I am sure the reasons why this is so will emerge. I wanted to instead focus on a Couple of points about why is this not happening even more into a greater degree? Why is an industry working much more closely with academia if as we'll hear later on I'm sure Everyone agrees that this is a good thing to do I think there are three fundamental mismatches that need to be addressed in order to promote even greater engagement. The first is a mismatch of time frame Industry many industries typically think in terms of two year three year maybe five year time frames to bring something a product to market where universities operate on a time frame of 10 to 20 years and therefore this mismatch of time frames creates a lot of differences in expectations and in results. The second is a mismatch in incentive systems. Many universities prioritise What I might call peer esteem? Often reflected through high impact publications, citations whereas of course industry are interested in bringing things to the market and So the incentive systems are often not well aligned and the third is a mismatch in culture Many industries you know like timelines deliverables milestones whereas the academics prefer a more free-flowing and flexible system if you like and So there are these mismatches I think create many challenges that get in the way of greater collaboration therefore to promote even greater and more productive collaboration we need to address these mismatches and I think these would be wonderful topic ready to hear comments and the questions from the rest of the panel and from from the audience, but maybe I just offer a couple of thoughts on this the first is the importance of people People who can bridge this mismatches either through leadership or academic entrepreneurs who are able to See and understand issues on the academic and the industry side and play an important role in bridging between these differences also, I think adaptive policy making both on the from the point of view of the public sector is Universities as well as industry would allow actually I think a more meaningful engagement and Productive ways of getting around some of these mismatches and I think the third could be Agencies public agencies that have specific roles in Addressing these in the case of Singapore we have the agency for science technology and research which is Funded by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which is a specific role to try to work between Academia and industry bringing together different types of competencies from the public research providers in order to Integrate and to work with industry so with that I thought I'll just leave you with some Thoughts about some of the mismatches that get in the way of collaboration and how we need to try to think of creative Solutions to address these in order to further promote more productive Academic and industry collaborations. Thank you. Thank you president So Singapore is interesting because it's you know It works on a very strategic basis at a national level and an agency like a star Can perhaps within that sort of very focused plan play a particular role I don't know whether you see particular virtue of that system that others might want to learn from Yeah, I think one of the difficulties about But industry of course works directly with universities and a lot of this happens in Singapore too but in some cases industry might want to go to a one-stop place where If you go to a star a star has its own research institutes and these institutes can actually shift What they're doing in two areas, which are maybe more relevant to an industry This is much harder to do in a university But at the same time this this research core Forms the vehicle by which a star can bring in other types of research Capabilities that may not be present in a star for example mathematics computing Material science from universities, but bring them in in a way that makes sense for the industry so in that way they can actually Bridge not just from the point of view of providing capabilities But also tapping on to other types of capabilities in universities in Singapore. Yeah, okay. Thank you professor cost Well, thank you for that great beginning president and I think that Notwithstanding the challenges you mentioned These are really incredibly exciting times for industry University Collaboration and I know all of our universities do quite a bit of it I think that in particular it's important because we're collaborating more amongst ourselves more than ever and When an in when a corporation connects with a university to work on fundamental long-term research They benefit from our ability to build collaborations across disciplines and across Institutions and they really engage and couple into our network and I think that that's something that they can't do amongst themselves as well as they can do by Collaborating with the university One good example of the networks that we have is in the UK With a system called the Center for doctoral training the centers for doctoral training Right now in physical science and engineering train over 50 percent of our PhD students and as you know research is done by PhD students and as you pointed out It's all about people and it's the relationship building with the corporations and through the through the universities that is so important At Imperial my colleague David Kluge and and his colleagues had developed an Institute for chemical biology And when they put it together it really became the foundation for these CDTs these centers for doctoral training by requiring that That there are two Advisors two supervisors for each student and that brings a multidisciplinary Advice structure research projects are chosen for their synergy with the theme of the center and the students and the faculty in that center then become a cohort that is Supporting one another and also Sort of self-organizing and as new ideas come up you bring in different disciplines and different Perspectives by through these collaborations, so it's focusing the research through doctoral training then leads to an innovation culture that Corporations can benefit from and one of the co-advisors can be from industry So that really builds the network out into the industrial world And I think that through that type of coupling Corporations get a lot of amplification and the ability to probe new and exciting areas that they wouldn't be seeing on their own In addition, I think that the student the Companies are in in addition to looking for research in new ideas They're looking for talent and that access to talent is incredibly important and they get that through universities One thing they really gain I believe is the visibility amongst all the students all the graduate students and the whole cohort as Not just the students working on the projects, but other students say oh, I didn't know that company did that kind of work That's really exciting. I might want to go work there And so it that visibility provides an extra and an incredibly important benefit to the companies Finally on the education front our Imperial business Partners program runs a tech foresighting Activity and I think this is exciting because our academics look out 20 years in their fields and try to project Where things may be this actually drives a lot of motivation for fundamental research Because you're looking out 20 years. You can't really predict, but you can foresee some of the exciting Evolution and this is I think exciting and important both for industry as well as for ourselves because stepping back and and trying to look forward and Think about where things are going is is really beneficial I think a lot of young scientists come into science because they're fascinated by fundamental problems You know the state of the universe or how organ organisms work But I wonder to what extent there may be People coming into universities who actually are fascinated by the challenges and in fact find industrial opportunities markets specific product types Actually interesting and stimulating I think that this generation of students is very compelled to Have benefit to do something that's beneficial for society and that may be An advance in a in an industry and they can foresee their ability to contribute to something that will have a real-world application and that's something that corporations bring to us when they Collaborate with us is that that grounding and that connection to the real problem So I do think that that is a factor and and students can Help synthesize how their fundamental work will translate into real-world applications it's all about right asking the right questions and and the doctoral training in in my view is really about Training students educating students to learn to ask the right questions and frame a problem for research Right. Thank you very much Professor Kang Yes, thank you The basic science is like a deep root in a tree Which can bear great fruits So as far as the university is concerned, I think the best outcome are the graduates of the university the doctoral program or other academic programs To me in my view they are The living technology and the science that can benefit industry These days with the global competition many corporations They have a broad net worldwide. They want to monitor what's going on in different countries They even make many trips to go visit to find out what's going on in different labs worldwide So how do we promote regional interaction between University and the industry? I think the regional University itself must present something unique and the strength In particular in terms of a scientific strength and also talent of students and the faculty So that's the focus that we are trying to emphasize and develop At Christ so I like to give some one specific example of a house such a thing may happen We have a professor in medical science and technology who has been doing research on epilepsy for young children And that's a very difficult problem. He has been working with the hospital medical doctor and the staff team and When epilepsy diseases are so severe for young children They have to have a brain surgery and cut off the part of infected area He did a fundamental study with his students to develop a theory for cause and the propagation of such Infection within our brain and he developed the theory which was good science And then he did the experiment his theory on a mice a mouse Healthy mouse with a history when he induced the epilepsy indeed the mouse had a lot of a problem He found a medicine which was originally developed for cancer treatment, but was not very successful He tried this medicine to this infected the mouse and the mouse became much better Was almost healed, but you have to constantly feed this drug He published this in our nature medicine and within two weeks that particular company for produce this medication drug rushed to meet with the professor and the develop our collaboration and so they established this The global link and they want to collaborate to develop the next phase are doing Experiment on a human. I think a depositioning of a drug itself is a patent of also in a pattern was even developed So such a case will further strengthen University industry collaborations Christ has done a lot in Semiconductor industry especially for Samsung 25% of R&D staff for their Christ graduates nowadays Samsung is a number one memory maker in the world We have done similar for IT and other sectors but I think by choosing this important science and the strength and the Training students who can go out and they contribute to industry. It's a highly important having said that often industry often say that You know, they don't want to do basic research and I think that itself is very short-sighted They should do basic research as well because when university does a basic research with many doctoral students When they graduate, where do they go? If you know not all of them can be university professors So they should find a job in industry and as a result I think the public sector should encourage This R&D labs in industry to carry out the basic research as well. Thank you Thank you So I don't know what the image of university of industry is in the minds of young scientists at Keist So some industry is very problem-solving very disciplined very financially well-managed etc Other companies which may be just as financially well-managed nevertheless allow for much more creativity on the part of their staff And Google is famous for the 20% Time that they allow people so I don't know whether you can speak to how your students and your postdocs perceive industry And how you as a university can help that match of mindset and culture. Yes, so when we say industry There are typically three classes of industry big corporation like a Samsung Hyundai type of corporation Which can offer the owner R&D staff there are medium-sized companies They probably are not capable and that there are very small companies. So The Keist graduates so they can either join up the corporations do research the medium-sized companies for that What we do is so we establish the connection office For instance in Pangyo near Seoul There are many many medium-sized companies in software and the biotechnology. So we have the liaison office there and they come Keist officer to find the Collaboratable topics of our collaboration. So we do that by linking that to professor's research There are third level really tiny small companies who cannot So for that, you know, we are now promoting Entrepreneurship and the startup companies so students who can do the startup companies They can not collaborate with those small companies. Okay. Thank you very much Francis Collins Well, it's privileged to be on the panel with such distinguished voices and I bring a slightly different voice But I think one very connected to universities That is of the major funder of biomedical research that goes on in those universities in the United States and actually with quite a lot of international collaborations that are also Decorated with various funding streams I think we've nicely heard the sort of potential conflicts here between the cultures of Academic and industrial approaches to biomedicine as well as the difference in timetables the difference in the reward structure And so it's not the most natural thing perhaps for such collaborations to occur So one of the roles it seems to me and one that I've tried to push forward for NIH is to come up with Ways to be a catalyst for those kinds of partnerships to develop when there's clearly a scientific need and And that might be sort of difficult to imagine how do you do that if it's not a natural sort of partnership? Are you in the role of herding cats sometimes trying to convince cats to go the direction you want them to? What I have learned as a funder is you may not be able to herd the cats, but you can move their food And and sometimes that's actually pretty effective in terms of convincing people that something might be worth a try It is an interesting time in biomedical science because we have this Remarkable explosion of information about the fundamental nature of how life works We are learning things that almost daily about the genome about how variations in the genome contribute to risk of disease To fundamentals about cell biology to stem cell efforts that allow you to look at cells as much more flexible and plastic kinds of Entities than we would have thought possible Imaging is bursting with potential We are even brave enough to think we might be able to understand the human brain all of these with enormous potential consequences for commercial application and Yet there still has been I think a difficulty at times figuring out how to bridge that divide Let me give one example of something we have started in just the last year and a half as I think a way Forward which is turning out to look pretty promising but not without its stresses and strains and that relates to drug discovery for common diseases Here we have this really remarkable outpouring of information about genetic risk factors for diabetes and Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis and lupus Crohn's disease on down this list asthma and so on and yet companies looking at those discoveries We're sort of saying to us you gave us too many options We wanted a short list of drug targets. We didn't want a thousand Well, there ought to be a way to sift through this So over the course of about three years working with heads of R&D of major pharma We've ultimately came up with a program called the accelerating medicines partnership amp Amp is a new model. It brings together 10 pharmaceutical companies and the leading Scientists who are studying Alzheimer's type 2 diabetes rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Those are our targets The scientists from both sectors sit around the same table. They designed the project They set very explicit milestones, which is sometimes antithetical to academic research But this is intended to be very targeted efforts there were go no go decisions along the way and The decision was that pharma would pay for half of the cost from these 10 companies and NIH would pay for the other half And yet all the data has to be open access because this is in a pre competitive space Now many people said well that'll never work Why would companies be willing to contribute to such an effort when the people who aren't part of it also get to see the Data because they want to be at the table. They want to help design the strategy They want to see the earliest possible glimpses of information. They want to build Relationships with the academic scientists who are leading the effort in those areas of disease So now about 18 months into this all of the milestones for those three major areas are on track Or in most instances slightly ahead of schedule And I think the scientists involved in this are discovering that it's actually quite an eye-opening Experience to see how the other half lives and sort of bringing the cultures together I would love to see us identify more examples of that sort as an opportunity for raising the consciousness of our entire Ecosystem about ways that we could work together that we haven't previously completely pursued One other thing I would say we do I think in that regard oh to our trainees and it's already been mentioned by others here The opportunity to learn about what is life like in the industrial sector and not have every trainee in an academic lab Think that their sole goal is to become a clone of their academic mentor And I'm afraid in many instances. That's the message we have been sending We at NIH are trying to change that by putting in place Requirements that our training programs actually give graduate students and postdocs Exposure to other kinds of scientific careers Including in the private sector including science policy or journalism so that you don't have this one mindset That unless I end up as a tenured track or tenured professor at a research-intensive university somehow I've failed We own we know in the US only one out of four of our graduate students are going to end up in those tenure track positions And we're doing a terrible disservice to the other three if we've not given everybody a chance to see where is your sweet spot And I think we academics need to do more of that kind of exposure early in the training process In order to increase this likelihood of transmission of ideas and people across what has too often been a yawning divide between public and private Thanks Francis. So you've been focusing on a very traditional and ever more exciting I would say strand of translation as it were from basic understanding through to drugs discovery in particular and treatments There was a discussion here at the World Economic Forum in Davos in fact a couple of years ago about Alzheimer's and Half the people in the room were exactly of the breed that you're talking about half of them were from the care sector And I'm interested to know to what extent the NIH sees care research as Equally or potentially equally important to that traditional biomedical approach to solving the problems of health Well, our responsibility is across that entire spectrum from the very most basic efforts and Alzheimer's is a good example To talk about where we are fundamentally in fact as part of this amp project looking at Systems biology of the human brain comparing normal brains to Alzheimer's disease to see whether there are additional drug targets lurking there Beyond what we already know about with amyloid and tau and APOE and that's pretty basic stuff But it's actually quite exciting the way it's turning out all the way through to clinical trials Where we certainly believe that the more of those we can do with promising therapeutics that have some hope to better And it's good that we are doing that even though it's expensive and again all the way to what about those who are already diagnosed Are their ways of caring for them that are more effective and are less burdensome to the care providers To be honest we do modest amounts of those kinds of things maybe in part and because a lot of the interventions Don't necessarily suit themselves particularly well to what you'd call a randomized controlled trial But it is part of our responsibility all the way across in collaboration with lots of other organizations and foundations that support that same effort Yeah, thank you very much. Dr. Lee Dr. Lee So so as we have interpreted so I will speak in Chinese so this is a global challenge and We're embracing the future scientific revolution now the Academia or the science sector hope the public sector can invest more and The government would like to see results and as we discussed about the investment and the results This is an important discussion But more importantly and this thing requires our joint efforts that is to improve the scientific research efficiency Now efficiency it means a range of efficiency including technology and it turns to the product and it goes on to the market and Produce the results. We want to see it's a whole The efficiency of the entire chain. I think that's a more important discussion than the mere discussion of Investment and results. I think for the academia. No one of the most important thing is the unfortunate lack of attention to the layout So the layout and the knowledge logic structure, it's not in the most optimal form because our knowledge is limited and also it's also influenced by some of the Man-made factors so even though there are Cross-discipline collaboration cross-discipline research, but the UNESCO in UNESCO catalog You cannot identify thousand of disciplines and It's organization. It's logic relationship. It's not very clear. So under such Circumstances, it's very difficult to improve efficiency So I think this is it's a problem that the academia has to Recognize that we have to design the new layout the new planning for the disciplines So that our research is more rational. It's more reasonable and if that can be achieved Then I believe our scientific projects and our investment can have greater efficiency and That's also in line with one of our themes today science education So the science education should also follow the new layout and logical the science and technology Yeah, so this is about the first point. I want to make it's about academia now for the public sector and the society I Believe they need to improve the efficiency of national efficient innovation system So we need to have more policies including government policies industrial policies Including cultural policies and tax policies To improve the efficiency of the innovation systems. I think various countries. They have the same problem That the they think the efficiency is not high enough But we still haven't reached a consensus on how to improve the efficiency for example The national innovation system should meet what kinds of principles for example, what are the principles? We have to follow Now some of the things we have to avoid absolutely, but we are not very clear in those general principles and And then when we are at the higher level then for the different national and different system How do we align? How do we collaborate? I think that's the government said the governments have to focus on so So according to the statistics of major companies Innovation process so from the science and research to innovation to application to product and to market And you you can imagine right and how long did you think he would take the efficiency index is a 0.6% So we have huge room to improve that if you can improve to greater than 1% that's a big improvement so governments public sectors should use the right policy to guide the improve of efficiency of the academia especially the appreciation Criteria especially the appreciation criteria the evaluation criteria is because We have diversity in that aspect for various countries But I think we need to agree on some of the basic rules We know the rules or the principles, but it hasn't been accepted by all the innovation systems Now the third part I want to make a point to the enterprises The business sectors they want to see the results quick they would like to invest in the quick Projects, but as the science and technology advances in order to solve some of the major problems of the Enterprises we need Technologies that's beyond our current standard. So companies Should ask themselves what is the key scientific problem they have to address and then they need to invest strategically So that they can solve the problem of the future. I think this is a more efficient investment because this Could shape the competitive advantage of these enterprises and this could not be easily obtained by other enterprises so as We are addressing the global challenge as we are embracing the science and technology revolution I guess we are also discussing the new paradigm of science and technology So against that background We need to improve efficiency various kinds of efficiency and this is The common interest of various stakeholders stakeholders that we need to share Responsibility and we need to take joint actions. I think this is a very important part Are there ways in which the Chinese Academy of Sciences is Increasing its engagement with industry in China or overseas in a way that will help that efficiency improvement what's your woman We value our collaboration with enterprises and Some of our collaborations with enterprises Put a greater emphasis on the fundamental research. For example, you need lever it founds out with fundamental research total is also funds some of the Fundamental research that we are having Because they have realized That this is important Of course different enterprises. They are focusing on different on Research areas, but as long as we can have a scientific breakthrough. It's very important for those enterprises and Now we are also Re-adjusting our layouts as well Mission of us. Good morning everybody. Thank you very much, Phillip. It's really Fantastic to hear and listen to all these professors and these finished professors some also in Government but Really listen to the points and and I would make here to start for our discussion Three main points the first one is about breaking these barriers in between Fundamental and non-fundamental research. I think that in the world that we live today I Get a little bit always puzzled in between Keeping to differentiate all the time in between what's fundamental and what's not fundamental and Having today here the president of the European Research Council, which I know agrees with me on that point That we have to try to break those barriers We have to try to look at research as a whole and that research as a whole is Important for industry and so I think that it's a little bit of the first step Which is how can we get out of those silos and that vertical way of thinking? That Fundamentally something that is very far away from industry very far away from people That's something that you have to work with us And you have to help help governments and institutions to be able to pass on that message The second point that I really want to to to make here Which is about? Patient capital I think that Industries and companies Along the years and along the the last 20 30 years Have lost what I call patient capital And if you look back in history and you see that for instance in the 1940s a Company like the Bell Company in the US in the Bell Labs Decided at the time for the first time to have a fundamental research or a basic research unit that then Was the basis for the discovery of the transistor? You see that that actually over time Disappeared and why because? Capital has to be very quick If you are a CEO and I was I come from the private sector You have to go every three months to the capital markets. You have to justify your accounts. You have to justify what you're doing and so You have no patient capital Waiting and so there's also a change and there's where Policy makers can be a make a difference and where institutions like the European Commission can make a difference is that how can you create? conditions for the existence of more Patient capital and I don't call it venture capital. I call it patient capital Patient in the sense of the patients and not in the sense of patient It's just just to be clear And so Really, I think that's one of the things that we have been working today in the European Commission is to look at how can we create? funds of funds For investment that can wait that can actually look at Science in the long run and not on the immediate Really on on the immediate scope the third point that I wanted to be a little bit more provocative here is that the way you do science has Totally changed in the past 10 years 20 years and one of the things that I frankly believe is that science is not just about scientists and And the fact that science in a digital world has actually these characteristics of being much more multi-disciplinary and have actually the input not just of the scientists, but also the users and I follow Very much for a long time a professor at the MIT called Eric von Hippel, which is the father of the concept of user innovation Which is an example that The scientists have also to be much closer to the user and you see that more and more I mean I've just been a couple of months ago in my home country To launch with the MIT and the university in Portugal a prize on patient In this case on the health sector innovation prize and one of the most Striking stories of that day for me was to find a man an engineer that at some point was Diagnosed in in the hospital with with a problem is in his aortic valve And he had so that the blood could not pump out of his heart properly and the doctor told him that he had six months to live And so he went home and he thought my god. I'm an engineer I have to find a solution here and so he found himself a solution to protect his aortic valve And he saved his life. So this was 10 years ago and he has saved the lives of 150 people already and so we gave him a prize for being an innovator in the area of health And I think that Really when you see scientists working with the users with the patient in the case of health and other Areas I think that it's really the way the future will be so I just wanted to really pick your brain also around Around all these distinguished professors about these these points. Thank you. So of course industry will also be very interested in the users and You run a you run a program on societal challenges This world economic forum for years has been looking at the societal challenges because it's all about the state of the world Is there anything you would say in your experience? I know it's early days About that program that somehow which obviously provides opportunities for industry as well as for universities About the character of such research when you set your goal as a societal challenge Rather than economic growth or fundamental discovery. Does that somehow change the discussion? absolutely feel I think that the division of My predecessors when they looked at research and they said look we have to change The approach and we have to go from a top-down approach of research to a bottom-up approach Where we look at societal challenges and then people have to solve those societal challenges So it is not just about medicine or chemistry or Social science is about everyone together trying to solve a problem and on that we have had a lot of success And a lot of great partnerships I mean I think that one of the the greatest examples in in the European Commission Are the partnerships we have it with industry that are working very well and have actually helped to increase the size of the cake you know some I've looked at the number and In the past years in terms of partnerships we as as public sector we have put around 8 billion euros that were leveraged up to 24 billion euros with the private sector Talking about the innovative medicines initiative the factories of the future other and so forth Other examples in in a commission where one you are able to leverage public money to get a bigger pot Second you have an alignment of the agendas that is very important in between the industry and and academia and Really that makes a difference also in terms of the results When you check results they go up to a lot of checks and balances in academia in industry And so the results we see from those partnerships are just Fabulous and and so I mean I just not referred one of the best partnerships We have called ED CTP, which is about AIDS malaria And other these neglected diseases in Africa with it's actually a public to public to private and To foundation so for private in the sense of corporates and private in the sense of also foundations And so there you have a multi stakeholder approach that is extremely interesting for for science as the editor of a an International and a multidisciplinary journal in science I've talked a lot to people in industry and funding in the universities and When you talk when you come to the grand societal challenges, it is interesting how everybody is on a learning curve And I think I'm picking up on some of what you said in the multi disciplinary aspects where you're trying to bring the social sciences And the natural sciences together and the incentives that people need to be rewarded for achievement Where it may not be a fundamental outstanding discovery and yet academics still need to gain respect for something that's useful So I just wanted to comment on that and to sort of encourage everybody as it were to rethink the normal criteria when it comes to these challenges in health and sustainability So we could have a discussion here on the platform But I'm I was told that I must absolutely open it up to the floor Unfortunately, I can hardly see the floor because of the the lights are very intense, but I can see some hands going up And I believe I hope there are some microphones. Yes, please So if you go to this person here, thank you Thank you very much for this very exciting discussion. My name is Kiyoko Hayashi. I'm a lecturer of Glovis University, Japan I'm very interested in the words patient capital and the funds and funds and to proceed Partnering of science. Do you have any expectation or needs for? educational Institute of business management not in a technology of science, okay Who wants to take that one? So the question was to develop a little bit the idea of a patient capital, right? I'm sorry. I think that one of the the points that you feel that we need in Europe is actually to diversify the funds and the ways that you finance in general innovation and science and so far that Funding of science in Europe and innovation in Europe has been done in a very traditional way You have grants in one side You have in the other side bank financing But it's very little for things related to science a little bit higher for innovation But not that much and you have to find ways of actually creating Venture capital funds that are actually more focused on the long term and Look at science as in economics We call it an option theory where you will have Some that will fail some that will actually succeed and some that will be great winners And so the idea behind that is actually to increase those alternative sources of finance Because the ecosystem of innovation Cannot survive without Financing and so you can have really I normally say that an ecosystem of innovation always have an university middle and then you have companies on the side and then you have people and then you have rules and then you have financing and Financing is actually one very important piece If not the piece that makes the whole system is a little bit like the blood system without financing It's like the body if your blood doesn't go from one part to the other part of the body So the financing side is what makes really the system works And so for me that's idea or these idea of patient capital is actually also a role of policymakers to talk to industry and explain the importance of Creating and the importance of that as a point for the future and the point to get returns Also on the money, but in a different and a longer term of view And that's one of the things that I really want to do At the back One of the things that I think can sometimes be a challenge when ideas from the academy try to move to industry or where industry tries to adopt ideas from the academy is the fact that things really really really need to work if you're going to build them into a commercial product into a product that's consumer facing and Very often, you know when something is dropped off at the door of a journal It might be a compelling paper, but does it really work? You know could you build a bridge based on it when you look at reproducibility projects like the one that recently emerged in psychology? You know the products of academia don't always work perfectly And I was hoping that maybe some of the panelists could comment on the need for reproducibility and the ways in which that might Might help connections between industry and the academy. Okay, so I'm gonna ask Alice and Francis to speak to those Francis Alice first. Well, I think that one really important thing that has happened is that In in perhaps it's different in different countries, but over the years Interactions with industry have changed and I see In my own career a period when there were the Bell labs and the Exxon research and the mobile research and the IBMs and all the great labs there were a lot of researchers in those labs and there was a lot of Collaboration, I think we went to a period where there was much more of a handoff of here Corporations that cut back on their basic research and were having research done in universities and expecting a report back And it was a a bit of a distance I think now the model is really towards integration and to your point I think if you're working in collaboration with key scientists in a corporation you have the opportunity for that that iteration on the idea and For the corporation to take it perhaps further into the working aspect while the academics are Focusing on the fundamentals and the new discoveries and the new pathways to proceed with the with the research It's all about that relationship though and that ability to Have that give and take and and work and take the directions that research takes as it proceeds and I think that If you can have as we do in some cases embedded scientists from a corporation in your laboratories as well as your people coin occasionally to the Industry labs you get that handoff and that translation into something that really works for them Francis yeah, I think you're really talking about the famous Valley of Death Where something that seemed like it was a promising idea the handoff fails and it never goes anywhere And of course there a couple things and what you said there is that we ought to pay attention to one of them being reproducibility because of Course if the original observation turns out not to have been all that rigorously determined in the first place Then maybe the Valley of Death is where it belongs because it wasn't really that That's certain to to end up resulting in something useful And this is a larger topic that I don't want to spend time on right at this moment But we do as academic scientists really need to take seriously the difficulties that are very much part of Evaluations of current productivity that a lot of things that get published in famous journals like nature Turn out when somebody else tries to reproduce it not quite to be possible to do so And we have a number of things in place to try to address that that I think ought to be taken very seriously But let's assume that actually the observation is a good one that this is a device or a Therapeutic that has a real promise. How do you make sure that that transition occurs? Obviously the best way it seems to me is if the transition is being shepherded by the people who know most about it So it's not dropped off at the door of some commercializing organization But it's actually carried through but many academics don't know how to do that And that is one of the things that we have to work harder on there is this I core effort in the u.s Which NSF and NIH have been jointly supporting to give academics more experience and entrepreneurship and commercialization We have grants a lot SBIRs and STTRs and names like that that also Encourage this kind of handoff and provide an opportunity to avoid that valley of death But ultimately again, I think we're talking about the place where our cultures have been perhaps a little bit too siloed and Bringing them together and all the things we've talked about in this panel this morning is going to be necessary to avoid What is unfortunately a very high failure rate of that kind of transition and that means better training better science Better bringing together cultures and more patient capital I like your term that makes it possible for people to invest in things of this sort without expecting A two or three-year turnaround and being driven by the you know the tyranny of the quarterly report which all too often has killed some great ideas Professor Tan, I just want to make a quick point that as you rightly pointed out I'm many researchers operating at trans translational research levels one two three whereas industry are really looking for Seven eight or nine and then there's a gap in between and in Ecosystems that are growing fast, but are not fully mature for example in Singapore We've actually taken the route of trying to create some of these bridging mechanisms through the Mission-oriented institutions like the agency for science technology and research where in fact We put both money as well as create facilities They take ideas through to a stage where they are much more likely to be Taken up by industry So we are I think this is Still early days, but it looks promising and it's one way in which you try to shepherd some of the more promising ideas Funding them into a state which is much more easy for industry to work on Professor Kahn Yes, I'd like to give a specific example which turned out to be very useful It's my personal case I do the computer aided the design of a VLSI very large-scale integrated circuits And their computer modeling and simulation is a very very important for design science. So Back many years back. I developed a new model and the simulation tool But industry didn't know how to use it or ourselves. So we're not sure whether that was really useful So the student who developed this tool took the internship in one of the largest semiconductor companies and worked with an internal champion of that corporation He himself was not sure whether this would be useful But nevertheless, they worked out during the summer and the student return The company had a big crisis What is called the electrostatic discharge in microchips? The IO periphery circuit can be destroyed when there is a electrostatic discharge happen You don't really know where that is happening. So they couldn't ship the product for six months so out of desperation this champion internal champion tried this tool and After a while eventually they were able to pinpoint based on the simulation where this problem occur They dissected the chip and that's sort of problem spot without such capability They would never find out where the problem was because you cannot dissect so many different places So this is one specific example of how the university Basic research or applied the research got migrated to industry for practical use So I think it's important for university researchers Be able to work with industry and also find internal champion of that industry to try out in other events So we are actually formally over time 1015 is when we were meant to end But because we started late, we're gonna go on for I'm gonna say five minutes and anyone can leave if they want So hands are shooting up. So there's a question here. So let's have a final question Hi, I'm tolu oni. I'm from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in the 2015 young scientist So I just wanted to flag the difference between commercial and social application of scientific advances, so we talk about Addressing future challenges and challenges of society But given the skewed distribution and inequities in terms of the burden of these challenges across populations within areas and across across areas and regions What do you perceive as the role of this? academic industry funder Collaboration in addressing those inequities and what is the catalyst for this sort of action or Or is it just herding cats? Pardon me wants to get you to answer that question, but I'm not going to who wants to answer that question Francis you put your hand up I really appreciate the question and I do think that is a responsibility of academia not only to identify Opportunities that are going to benefit those who are already in the higher Situation as far as socioeconomic status, but particularly to reach out to less Fortunate ones and especially for low and middle-income countries where these kinds of developments may have the greatest impact Certainly for a public funder like NIH that's got to be a very high priority Working with other enterprises like Bill and the Gates Foundation, but oftentimes the opportunities here for Commercialization are particularly appealing especially now that we have an opportunity in some of those countries to leapfrog over Things that have been way too slow happening in high-income countries But particularly not taking advantage of cell phones can be done in in places that desperately need advances in health So I do think you're right. We should not just be thinking about those gadgets that are going to be expensive and Grabbed on to by people who already have lots of resources We should prioritize especially those in places where the needs are even greater Dr. Lee and then finally Professor Cast now I I think the open access and open data will be will be very helpful for such Difference remove such a difference unfortunately unfortunately Personally, I think open access Should looking for a new model It cannot be too much business involved Okay, that is that is currently Okay speaking as a publisher. I'm gonna quickly pass the floor to Professor gas I agree wholeheartedly I think that one thing that universities and governments have to do is make sure our reward structures are not centered on The term economic development and and impact measured by economic development everywhere you travel in the world Everyone is looking towards universities to help improve their economic development and society benefits from clean water healthy populations good infrastructure and a lot of those things aren't measured in startup companies and in Finance, but they're measured in quality of life and and benefits to society and that's Something that we need to be mindful of and think about in our reward structures So just when you're getting to the end of an interesting conversation People bring up the biggest issues some of the biggest issues around there So we'll have to save them for next year reproducibility access equity. However a great panel Thank you very much for your questions and to the panel