Today we had Tijana Close chatting about her role at the Science Knowledge Exchange Team (part of the Research, Partnerships and Innovation department). Knowledge exchange is a team of people helping to link researchers to non-academic partners.

What is Knowledge Exchange?

Knowledge exchange at the Faculty of Science is a team of four people supporting research activities and collaborations, including Tijana. Tijana has a background in research (PhD in plant pathology) but also in research support and administration. Basically, Knowledge Exchange is about fostering collaboration between researchers and non-academic stakeholders to drive tangible impact. That can encompass things like collaborative research, invited/guest lectures, secondments (more about secondments here), exhibitions, patenting, etc. A longer list of different knowledge exchange activities can be found here.

How does it work?

Let’s say you want to work on evidence-based policy changes based on your research. The Knowledge Exchange team can help you with the following steps:

1. Who do you need to engage with (e.g. NGOs, MPs, etc.)?
2. How do you engage with them?
3. What can you provide to them? It’s important that the Knowledge Exchange goes both ways and has a benefit for you but also for the non-academic associates!
4. How can you break the objectives into applicable steps?

From here, the team can help you go through these steps with the non-academic collaborators to effectively achieve the goals of the project. In the EEB department, several people have successfully gone through it, for example: Matt Johnson organised Biofest, Nic Hemmings did some work on assessing fertility and embryo survival rates for threatened turtle and tortoise species in Seychelles, or Dylan Childs and Tom Lewis worked on a passive acoustic monitoring platform for endangered parrot species.

How to apply?

The University of Sheffield offers three annual grant calls every year with the applications being judged at both faculty and institutional levels. All PIs and postdocs can apply. PhD students can apply as well but they’ll have to do it together with their PI. You can see the current call here.

Finally we had some more chats about intellectual property and legal mumbo jumbo that the Knowledge Exchange team can also help with. Here is a list of links that might be useful:

• About contracts
• About non-disclosure agreements and here
• About material transfer agreements
• About consultancy