Academic-industry Partnerships Research Articles

Academia–Industry Partnerships for Hospitality and Tourism Education in Tanzania

ABSTRACTThis article examines approaches to partnership between the tourism industry and educational institutions in the provision of tourism education. It assesses how partnerships facilitate the development of skills in Tanzania and recommends a framework for effective collaboration. The study utilized focus group discussions and interviews with tourism industry and training institutions. A total of 356 respondents participated. It was revealed that internships, practical training, graduate employment, and financial contributions by industry in the form of skills development levy and tourism development levy are the major approaches to partnership for the provision of tourism education. A low level of understanding among students explained by language barriers, inadequate training facilities, a shortage of qualified educators, poor enforcement of national curricula, and limited internship and placement opportunities are the major challenges to skills development. The article proposes a framework for effective partnership among key stakeholders in the industry.

Disrupting Unemployment: Re-engineering Job Creation and Labour Supply-chains

The world economy is experiencing unpredictable economic volatility and uncertainty, with possible calamitous social, political and economic consequences. One of the greatest challenges of our times is unemployment. Job creation in the 21st century has been inhibited by the recent global economic meltdown, the unprecedented rise in automation and absence of a framework to reconcile labour demand with labour supply even as skills and nature of jobs undergo fast paced change.The current global scenario of growing unemployment blues poses a tremendous threat to inclusive global economic growth. Political eco-systems have shown inclination towards protectionism in major world economies, propelled by the idea that immigration reduces the number of available jobs. However, in this paper we identify skill gap, lack of industry-academia partnership and absence of life-long learning opportunities as key detriments to employment opportunities in the knowledge economy. We try to elucidate the process of disrupting unemployment in an era marked by constant change and uncertainty for most economies. We suggest re-engineering of job creation methods and restructuring of labour supply chains as two possible solutions to it.

Strategic Academia – Industry Partnerships, Incubations and their Outcomes: A Holistic View

Academia-industry partnerships have been discussed before by many researchers and during the last two decades and academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to their ability to advance industrial application of scientific knowledge. (Barbara et al, 2013). The outcomes of these spin-offs have not generated much enthusiasm amongst the industry due to consistent failures. This fact can be attributed to the fact that there are concerns which needs to be addressed like clear guidelines on joint ownerships, IP ownership patterns, patents, profit sharing and technology transfer norms amongst others. The idea that universities should go beyond education and research and undertake a third mission of direct interaction and contribution to the industry has found increased attention in past decade. This direct interaction and contribution in the form of university incubations and spinoffs provides a win-win situation for both universities as well as the industry. However, it is not easy to manage these university start-ups. This paper makes an attempt to explore the challenges faced by university spinoffs and present incubators as a potential enabler to overcome such challenges. The study identifies some of the important challenges that university spinoffs face such as product development, technology push problem, finances, market uncertainty, human capital and business strategy. The research tries to facilitate the establishment of clear guidelines for collaborative win-win partnership amongst academia and industry.

Teaching Safety Critical Control System: A Success Story of Industry Academia Relation

At times, safety critical control systems have failed in their missions. However, the world is moving towards complete autonomy with autonomous driverless cars likely to ply to ferry people in near future. Emerging young engineers will face the world inadequately equipped to address these challenges. Safety Critical Algorithms, Formal Methods and Testing are the need of the hour. The only way to solve this demand for competence that is maturing and needs to be brought up rapidly is to have industry academia collaboration. This paper presents a few safety critical control failure cases and highlights the gap between the student, academia and the industry. A brief description of what has been done as part of the industry academia partnership with MAHE, Manipal, a deemed private University in specific is brought out.

Inhibitors of LexA Autoproteolysis and the Bacterial SOS Response Discovered by an Academic-Industry Partnership.

The RecA/LexA axis of the bacterial DNA damage (SOS) response is a promising, yet nontraditional, drug target. The SOS response is initiated upon genotoxic stress, when RecA, a DNA damage sensor, induces LexA, the SOS repressor, to undergo autoproteolysis, thereby derepressing downstream genes that can mediate DNA repair and accelerate mutagenesis. As genetic inhibition of the SOS response sensitizes bacteria to DNA damaging antibiotics and decreases acquired resistance, inhibitors of the RecA/LexA axis could potentiate our current antibiotic arsenal. Compounds targeting RecA, which has many mammalian homologues, have been reported; however, small-molecules targeting LexA autoproteolysis, a reaction unique to the prokaryotic SOS response, have remained elusive. Here, we describe the logistics and accomplishments of an academic-industry partnership formed to pursue inhibitors against the RecA/LexA axis. A novel fluorescence polarization assay reporting on RecA-induced self-cleavage of LexA enabled the screening of 1.8 million compounds. Follow-up studies on select leads show distinct activity patterns in orthogonal assays, including several with activity in cell-based assays reporting on SOS activation. Mechanistic assays demonstrate that we have identified first-in-class small molecules that specifically target the LexA autoproteolysis step in SOS activation. Our efforts establish a realistic example for navigating academic-industry partnerships in pursuit of anti-infective drugs and offer starting points for dedicated lead optimization of SOS inhibitors that could act as adjuvants for current antibiotics.

The Analysis on Educational Demands and Perception of Competencies of Corporate Field Teachers of Industry-Academia Partnership Apprenticeship School

The Analysis on Educational Demands and Perception of Competencies of Corporate Field Teachers of Industry-Academia Partnership Apprenticeship School

Under-Declaring Work, Falsely Declaring Work: Under-Declared Employment in the European Union

Under-Declaring Work, Falsely Declaring Work: Under-Declared Employment in the European Union

Genome stability of bovine in vivo-conceived cleavage-stage embryos is higher compared to in vitro-produced embryos.

Is the rate and nature of chromosome instability (CIN) similar between bovine in vivo-derived and in vitro-cultured cleavage-stage embryos? There is a major difference regarding chromosome stability of in vivo-derived and in vitro-cultured embryos, as CIN is significantly lower in in vivo-derived cleavage-stage embryos compared to in vitro-cultured embryos. CIN is common during in vitro embryogenesis and is associated with early embryonic loss in humans, but the stability of in vivo-conceived cleavage-stage embryos remains largely unknown. Because human in vivo preimplantation embryos are not accessible, bovine (Bos taurus) embryos were used to study CIN in vivo. Five young, healthy, cycling Holstein Friesian heifers were used to analyze single blastomeres of in vivo embryos, in vitro embryos produced by ovum pick up with ovarian stimulation (OPU-IVF), and in vitro embryos produced from in vitro matured oocytes retrieved without ovarian stimulation (IVM-IVF). Single blastomeres were isolated from embryos, whole-genome amplified and hybridized on Illumina BovineHD BeadChip arrays together with the bulk DNA from the donor cows (mothers) and the bull (father). DNA was also obtained from the parents of the bull and from the parents of the cows (paternal and maternal grandparents, respectively). Subsequently, genome-wide haplotyping and copy-number profiling was applied to investigate the genomic architecture of 171 single bovine blastomeres of 16 in vivo, 13 OPU-IVF and 13 IVM-IVF embryos. The genomic stability of single blastomeres in both of the in vitro-cultured embryo cohorts was severely compromised (P < 0.0001), and the frequency of whole chromosome or segmental aberrations was higher in embryos produced in vitro than in embryos derived in vivo. Only 18.8% of in vivo-derived embryos contained at least one blastomere with chromosomal anomalies, compared to 69.2% of OPU-IVF embryos (P < 0.01) and 84.6% of IVM-IVF embryos (P < 0.001). Genotyping data obtained in this study has been submitted to NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO; accession number GSE95358). There were two main limitations of the study. First, animal models may not always reflect the nature of human embryogenesis, although the use of an animal model to investigate CIN was unavoidable in our study. Second, a limited number of embryos were obtained, therefore more studies are warranted to corroborate the findings. Although CIN is also present in in vivo-developed embryos, in vitro procedures exacerbate chromosomal abnormalities during early embryo development. Hence, the present study highlights that IVF treatment compromises embryo viability and should be applied with care. Additionally, our results encourage to refine and improve in vitro culture conditions and assisted reproduction technologies. The study was funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) (TBM-090878 to J.R.V. and T.V.), the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO; G.A093.11 N to T.V. and J.R.V. and G.0392.14 N to A.V.S. and J.R.V.), the European Union's FP7 Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP, SARM, EU324509 to J.R.V., T.V., O.T, A.D., A.S. and A.K.) and Horizon 2020 innovation programme (WIDENLIFE, 692065 to J.R.V., O.T., T.V., A.K. and A.S.). M.Z.E., J.R.V. and T.V. are co-inventors on a patent application ZL913096-PCT/EP2014/068315-WO/2015/028576 ('Haplotyping and copy-number typing using polymorphic variant allelic frequencies'), licensed to Cartagenia (Agilent Technologies).

A hindsight reflection on the clinical studies of poly(l-glutamic acid)-paclitaxel.

Chemotherapy for cancer treatment is limited by the excessive toxicity to normal tissues. The design of chemodrug-loaded nanoformulations provides a unique approach to improve the treatment efficacy while minimizing toxicity. Despite the numerous publications of nanomedicine for the last several decades, however, only a small fraction of the developed nanoformulations have entered clinical trials, with even fewer being approved for clinical application. Poly(l-glutamic acid)-paclitaxel (PG-TXL) belongs to the few formulations that reached phase III clinical trials. Unfortunately, the development of PG-TXL stopped in 2016 due to the inability to show significant improvement over current standard care. This review will provide an overview of the preclinical and clinical evaluations of PG-TXL, and discuss lessons to be learned from this ordeal. The precise identification of suitable patients for clinical trial studies, deep understanding of the mechanisms of action, and an effective academic-industry partnership throughout all phases of drug development are important for the successful bench-to-bedside translation of new nanoformulations. This article is categorized under: Implantable Materials and Surgical Technologies > Nanomaterials and Implants Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Oncologic Disease Biology-Inspired Nanomaterials > Peptide-Based Structures.

Design, Development and Delivery of Active Learning Tools in Software Verification &amp; Validation Education

Active learning tools are critical in imparting real world experiences to the students within a classroom environment. This is important because graduates are expected to develop software that meets rigorous quality standards in functional and application domains with little to no training. However, there is a well-recognized need for the availability of effective active tools. This need has been addressed by the authors by designing, developing, and delivering, twenty delivery hours of Case Studies, sixteen delivery hours of Class Exercises, and six delivery hours of Video Case Studies for use in V&amp;V courses. The active learning tools focus on some specific SV&amp;V topics such as requirements engineering, software reviews, configuration management, and software testing. Four key skill areas sought after by employers, namely communication skills, applied knowledge of methods, applied knowledge of tools, and research exposure have been used to drive the development funded by a National Science Foundation grant and perfected through an industry-academia partnership. These tools have been successfully disseminated to over 25 universities with many CS, IS, SE programs incorporating the tools in their existing courses and others designing new courses based on these tools.In this paper we present data on the student feedback and pedagogical effectiveness of the strategies used to effectively incorporate and deliver the developed active learning tools by instructors at two universities. Traditional and flipped classroom delivery strategies are discussed as well as topics like pre-requisite knowledge preparation prior to class, course module presentation sequence, homework, team/individual work, collaborative discussions, and assessment tools are deliberated. The student questionnaire data from the two University Partners who used the V&amp;V instructional activities were quite positive and showed that students were interested in the activities, saw the real-world applications, and communicated with their classmates as they solved the problems. Educational outcomes assessment demonstrated more effective learning in all key learning areas.

India promotes industry-academia R&amp;D collaborations

India has approved the first-ever industry-academia partnership program to accelerate discovery research and enable development of products such as vaccines, biotherapeutics, and diagnostics. Called the Biopharma Mission, it is aimed at improving the health of India’s population through affordable product development, a goal in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s recently released National Health Policy. The new effort, which includes training a skilled workforce, is expected to enhance India’s technological and product development capabilities in the biopharmaceutical sector so it becomes globally competitive in the next 10–15 years, the government says in a statement. The program will aim to enhance technology transfer capabilities in the public and private sectors and enable start-ups and small and medium-size enterprises to build the capacity for sharing innovative research. The $250 million initiative, which includes $125 million in a loan from the World Bank, is expected to roll ou...

Abstract A41: Combination immunotherapy leads to decreased tumor growth

Abstract Introduction/Background: Talimogene Laherparepvec (T-Vec) is the first oncolytic virus to be FDA approved for the treatment of cancer. T-Vec, a modified Herpes Simplex Type I virus (HSV I), has two mechanisms of action: direct cell lysis and immune activation. Combination immunotherapy using T-Vec and check-point blockade has shown promise in clinical trials.1 In preliminary work, our lab has shown that T-Vec causes up-regulation of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) on infiltrating T cells in mice, suggesting potential synergy of T-Vec and anti-PD1 (α-PD1). The purpose of our study is to evaluate the effectiveness of combination immunotherapy to treat melanoma tumors in a transgenic BRAF melanoma model and study the immune microenvironment of these tumors post treatment. Materials and Methods: In a temporally and spatially regulated murine model of BRAFCA PTEN-/- spontaneous melanoma2, tumors are induced on the shaved right flank of mice. When tumors reach ≥5mm in diameter, mice are randomized into 6 treatment groups comparing combinations of BRAF inhibition (BRAFi) or control chow, intraperitoneal injections of α-PD1 or control (2A3), and intratumoral injections of T-Vec or control (PBS) by intratumoral injection. Treatment Groups: 1: Control + 2A3 + PBS 2: BRAFi + 2A3 + PBS 3: BRAFi + α-PD1 + PBS 4: BRAFi + 2A3 + T-Vec 5: BRAFi + α-PD1 + T-Vec 6: Control + α-PD1 + T-Vec Tumor growth is measured biweekly until end of study. Flow cytometry is performed on tumor, lymph node, and spleen to assess immune microenvironment. Multiplex immunohistochemistry will also be performed and analyzed with Mantra, using 6 immune biomarkers. Results: Mean tumor volume and survival was plotted to compare groups. Mice treated with combination T-Vec + BRAFi with or without α-PD1 have decreased tumor growth and longer survival compared to mice treated with control or single drug arms. Flow cytometry shows an increase in percent CD3+ cells in tumors of mice treated with combination α-PD1 + T-Vec compared to the control and single drug arms. Further analysis revealed very few CD45+ cells in tumors of the control group whilst mice receiving combination immunotherapy without BRAFi have higher CD45+ cells in tumor. Percent CD8+/CD3+ cells in tumors treated with immunotherapy appears to be increased compared to the control and BRAFi only group. Additionally, percent of CD4+/FOXP3+ cells in tumors appears to be decreased in groups receiving T-Vec while no change in CD4+/FOXP3+ populations was observed in draining lymph node or spleen. Conclusions: Initial findings show that combination therapy of BRAFi + α-PD1 + T-Vec is more effective than any single treatment. Combination immunotherapy increases infiltration of T cells into tumor. Furthermore, oncolytic virus appears to decrease CD4+/FOXP3+ (regulatory T cells) infiltrating tumor. This study is ongoing and further analysis will continue as we further evaluate the immune microenvironment using flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry. Acknowledgements: The study was funded by the Melanoma Research Alliance and Amgen (Amgen-CUMC-MRA Established Investigator Academic-Industry Partnership Award).

Creep of geomaterials – some finding from the EU project CREEP

This paper gives a summary of some of the main findings of the EU founded project “Creep of geomaterials”, CREEP. CREEP was an Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) project funded from the 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) of the EC under grant agreement PIAG-GA-2011-286397. The project aimed at establishing a consensus in creep modelling within geotechnical engineering. The materials studied were clay, peat and frozen soils (permafrost). Throughout the project, research on material behaviour in laboratory and field studies was combined with numerical studies using existing and newly developed mathematical frameworks. This paper summarises some of the findings in the project, although the focus is on the developments in the field of soft soils and soft clay in particular. The paper presents a unified enhanced soft clay creep model, which takes into account anisotropy, structure and rate dependency of the material. The performance of the model is demonstrated through analysis of the Murro test embankment. In addition, the paper gives an overview of some characteristics for frozen soil and peat. Some of the considerations regarding, e.g. over consolidation ratio for clay with respect to strain rate are very much valid for peat and frozen soil as well.

Using Academia-Industry Partnerships to Enhance Software Verification &amp; Validation Education via Active Learning Tools

Imparting real world experiences in a software verification and validation (SV&amp;V) course is often a challenge due to the lack of effective active learning tools. This pedagogical requirement is important because graduates are expected to develop software that meets rigorous quality standards in functional and application domains. Realizing the necessity the authors designed and developed 42 delivery hours of active learning tools consisting of Case Studies, Class Exercises, and Case Study Videos for use in courses that impart knowledge on SV&amp;V topics viz. requirements engineering, software reviews, configuration management, and software testing. Four key skill areas sought after by employers, namely communication skills, applied knowledge of methods, applied knowledge of tools, and research exposure are used to drive the development funded by a National Science Foundation grant and perfected through an industry-academia partnership.In this paper, we discuss in detail the four project plans the researchers and their industry counterparts followed over the past two years in the development and eventual dissemination of the active learning tools. A course enhancement plan was used to drive activities related to reviewing, enhancing, and modularizing modules, identified by a gap analysis performed by focus groups comprised of industry and academic partners. The course delivery plan was used to drive activities related to developing content delivery strategies. An evaluation and assessment plan was used to drive activities related to periodically evaluating student learning and assessing the project. And finally a course dissemination plan is being used to drive activities related to distributing course modules and assessment reports. The tools have been shared through two workshops and other means with instructors in universities and industry partners.

SoftCoDeR approach: promoting Software Engineering Academia-Industry partnership using CMD, DSR and ESE

The Academia-Industry partnership has been increasingly encouraged in the software development field. The main focus of the initiatives is driven by the collaborative work where the scientific research work meets the real needs of the Industry. Aiming to contribute to this effort we have proposed an approach called SoftCoDeR (Software Cooperative Design Research) that combines CMD (Cooperative Method Development), a method of Action Research, to concepts of DSR (Design Science Research). We have applied the SoftCoDeR approach in a software development company to support a research and development project aiming to integrate User Experience practices into the agile software development process. In this paper, we present new findings about this approach that has been extended with the use of Experimental Software Engineering (ESE) practices to conduct experimental validations of artifacts before putting them in industrial practice.

No Denying It: Medicinal Chemistry Training Is in Big Trouble.

There has been little consensus between the pharmaceutical industry and academic communities concerning the best approach to train medicinal chemists for drug discovery. For decades the pharmaceutical industry has shown preference for synthetic organic graduates over candidates with degrees from medicinal chemistry programs on the assumption that medicinal chemistry expertise will be acquired on the job. However, ongoing changes to pharmaceutical drug discovery organizations and practices threaten to undermine this training model. There is a compelling argument to be made for establishment of a strong industry-academic partnership to train new candidates with sophisticated knowledge of contemporary drug design concepts and techniques to ensure that the future needs of both industry and academic drug discovery research can be served.

An Opportunity for Industry–Academia Partnership: Training the Next Generation of Industrial Researchers in Characterizing Higher Order Protein Structure

Training researchers for positions in the United States biopharmaceutical industry has long been driven by academia. This commentary explores how the changing landscape of academic training will impact the industrial workforce, particularly with regard to the development of protein therapeutics in the area of biophysical and higher order structural characterization. We discuss how to balance future training and employment opportunities, how academic-industrial partnerships can help young scientists acquire the skills needed by their future employer, and how an appropriately trained workforce can facilitate the translation of new technology from academic to industrial laboratories. We also present suggestions to facilitate the coordinated development of industrial-academic educational partnerships to develop new training programs, and the ability of students to locate these programs, through the development of authoritative public resources.

The SAATELLITE and EVADE Clinical Studies Within the COMBACTE Consortium: A Public-Private Collaborative Effort in Designing and Performing Clinical Trials for Novel Antibacterial Drugs to Prevent Nosocomial Pneumonia.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative-funded COMBACTE consortium fosters academic-industry partnership in pioneering studies to combat serious bacterial infections. We describe how this partnership is advancing the development of 2 monoclonal antibodies, MEDI4893 and MEDI3902, for the prevention of nosocomial pneumonia.

Strategy to achieve biomarker-driven immunosuppression after solid organ transplantation by an academic-industry partnership within the European BIO-DrIM consortium

Solid organ transplantation has emerged as the “gold standard” therapy for end-stage organ failure as it improves both quality of life and survival. Despite the progress in short-term graft survival, that is closely associated with the impressive reduction of acute rejections within the first year, long-term graft and patient survival remain almost unchanged and unsatisfactory. Incomplete control of chronic allograft injury but particularly the adverse effects of long-term immunosuppression, such as graft toxicity, diabetes, cardiovascular events, infections, and tumours continue to challenge the long-term success. In general, immunosuppression is applied as one-size-fits-all strategy. This can result in over- and under-immunosuppression of patients with low and high allo-responsiveness, respectively. Trial- and -error strategies to minimize or even completely wean of immunosuppression have a high failure rate. Consequently, there is an unmet medical need to develop biomarkers allowing objective risk stratification of transplant patients. To achieve this goal, we engaged in an academic-industrial partnership. The central focus of the European-wide BIO-DrIM consortium (BIOmarker-Driven IMmmunosuppression) is the implementation of biomarker-guided strategies for personalizing immunosuppress- ion to improve the long-term outcome and to decrease the adverse effects and costs of chronic immunosuppression in solid organ transplant patients. The concept includes four innovative investigator-driven clinical trials designed by the consortium.

Establishing Academic-Industry Partnerships

Emphasizing a transdisciplinary research model for distributed usability testing, this article offers a case study for establishing successful academic-industry partnerships. The authors describe the collaboration process between the co-investigators in this partnership: the UX researchers, the user participants, and the stakeholders at the industry company. The authors explain how they used the transdisciplinary research model to write a winning proposal for collaboration and then highlight how the benefits of a transdisciplinary research model were realized in practice. The implications of the authors' findings support developing UX curriculum and pedagogy in ways that emphasize real-world application tied to transdisciplinary research teams and formal, distributed usability testing.