To foster more meaningful relationships that drive mutual benefits for both the university and its partners, UTS has introduced a Deep Sector Engagement initiative that aims to transform the way we engage with the various industry sectors in which we have cross-disciplinarity research expertise.
Deep Sector Engagement at UTS
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Dr Alex Thomson speaking at Research Cafe
Dr Alex Thomson, Industry Engagement Manager for the Climate Change Cluster (C3) research institute, in the Faculty of Science, is a co-lead of the Deep Sector Engagement Climate group at UTS. She explained in the Research Café how this externally framed approach seeks to understand how a sector operates and how UTS and its partners can co-create value.
There are currently four different sectors identified within the initiative; Climate, Agriculture and Horticulture, Health and Med Tech, and Defence and Space.
Supported by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Alex explained that Deep Sector Engagement is about identifying the different sectors across the university where there are large external drivers and problems with emerging industries that the university can help with and develop research capability in.
“Prof Kate McGrath describes our mission as to develop a strategy for the university of how we can identify the capabilities within the different sectors we have, in my case Climate, and connect researchers together to then start to integrate into external ecosystems,” Alex said.
The ultimate goal is that there will no longer be a distinction between a university climate research capability and the external need.
Prof Kate McGrath describes our mission as to develop a strategy for the university of how we can identify the capabilities within the different sectors we have, in my case Climate, and connect researchers together to then start to integrate into external ecosystems.
“The goal is for them to be cohesive,” she said. “And when people think about climate, they don’t just think about big climate companies, they think about UTS as well.”
Meeting emerging climate needs
Working alongside co-leads Prof Meredith Edwards from Climate-KIC Australia in the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) and Prof Martina Linnenluecke from the UTS Business School, Alex and the team are in the process of identifying what are UTS’s unique capabilities within climate research.
The group have begun this work by analysing data to work out where UTS has common capability in climate.
“We are validating our findings with UTS researchers who are working in the climate space, and also identifying what partners we have in climate and what partners that we should have in climate.”
“We’ll then develop a strategy to guide how we build up this capability and enhance the reputation that we have in climate research and start to talk to the external environment - the industry partners, the government bodies – to ask them what type of work needs to be done in the climate space. What type of work do they see that we have that would add value, and how do we build that reputation?”
While UTS has attracted significant funding for climate projects, this is not completely indicative of the university’s entire capability and emerging capabilities.
“Our next step is to bring in research partners and funders and help them to understand where we are at. Conversely we want to hear from them in terms of where they think our climate capability sits and what they are needing in terms of climate support, research and advice.”
“It’s not just about research. It’s about creating networks so that we can respond to things and build those bigger project teams. It's also about looking at our intellectual property portfolio and how we integrate that and promote it better.”
Also on the horizon is finding opportunities for UTS researchers to participate in influential advisory boards.
“And also looking at things like philanthropy and enterprise learning. How do we integrate our client reputation across all these different areas and start to build relationships so we can kind of spread those out more cohesively?”
It’s not just about research. It’s about creating networks so that we can respond to things and build those bigger project teams.
Additional Deep Sector Engagement strategies are being developed in these areas:
- Space and Defence: Led by Rob Fitch, Dush Thalakotuna, Thomas Leoni
- Agriculture and Horticulture: Led by Negin Shariati Moghadam, Damien Giurco, Grace Johnson
- Health: Led by Hui Chen, Susan Morton, Kathleen Peters
What’s next?
Learn more about how the UTS Deeps Sector Engagement approach is developing a whole-of-university engagement model, moving beyond individual faculty strategies to cohesive, institutional-level, connected research strategies that align UTS's world-class research capabilities with end users.