Successful University-Industry Collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration between universities and industry is acknowledged as being mutually beneficial to both parties; industry can benefit by bringing new innovation into their products, while for academia practical case studies from industry can add further value to research.  However, as industry and academia have very different perspectives, reconciling these is a key challenge which needs to be overcome.  The CA Labs research model aims to balance the objectives of both academia and industry. 
Some components of the model include:
(1) defining a research topic which is both related to a product and provides a case study for an interesting research problem,
(2) closer hands-on collaboration between university researchers and software developers as a means of bridging the communication gap and
(3) balancing short-term objectives against long term research goals.  This presentation discusses these and other key factors to a successful collaboration as well as further challenges.  The current collaborations between Swinburne University of Technology and CA Technologies are illustrative examples of successful collaboration.

About the presenter

Steve Versteeg is a Research Staff Member with CA Labs, based in Melbourne, Australia. His role is to coordinate collaborative research between universities and CA Technologies. The current projects are in the areas of software engineering, role engineering and anti-malware.
Steve's PhD research was in the area of neural simulation. A well studied neural circuit was used as a case study for re-creating robust behaviour in computer systems.
From 2004 until early 2008, Steve worked at Elysium Capital as a senior developer and researcher on an experimental automated futures trading system. Steve holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Melbourne.

For further information about CS3 seminars, please see
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ict/research/cs3/seminars.html