Altogether, around 100 partnerships took part in the previous three editions of the programme. The organiser – the Wroclaw Academic Centre – defines a partnership as a tandem including a scientist who works for a Wroclaw-based company for one year (without abandoning his university job). The researcher utilises his knowledge in practice, the entrepreneur acquires for free a person with the most up-to-date knowledge, and the city who pays the scientists benefits from this, too, because such co-operation provides an opportunity for new jobs and development of the local business sector.
On Tuesday, scientists and entrepreneurs talked about the results of their co-operation in the campus of the Wroclaw Research Centre EIT+.
Małgorzata Zakrzewska, Ph.D., a biotechnologist from the University of Wroclaw, worked on a method of acquisition of stem cells for Pure Biologics, a biotechnological company. This work was inspired by research carried on by the researcher’s friend in one of the institutes in California. ‘The company engaged me because they didn’t want to risk,’ said Małgorzata Zakrzewska. ‘The Mozart programme assumes that a scientist will work for an enterprise for one day per week, but I admit that I spent much more time in the laboratory.
The co-operation yielded good results. ‘Today we have a ready technology for the acquisition of stem cells that may be utilised for a regenerative therapy. However, further research and a programme for the commercialisation of results are needed,’ added the researcher.
A very interesting story was told by Piotr Czekierda, the president of Meli Melum - a cidre manufacturer that established co-operation with Joanna Chmielewska, Ph.D., from the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Today, after almost two years of the co-operation, Meli Melum is available in many prestigious establishments and shops. ‘Working on technology, we want to work on the culture of cider, too,’ stressed Piotr Czekierda. ‘During our co-operation with Ms Chmielewska, we received strong laboratory support and carried out experiments with the use of yeast and temperature.’
The president of Meli Melum remarked that working with scientists is a source of many tensions, emphasising that these are creative tensions: ‘The companies that invest their money in research strive to achieve the fastest outcome possible, which should bring profits and a return on the investment. Researchers often decide to take a step aside, which prolongs the decisive process, but this approach actually leads to innovative and non-conventional solutions.’
We are good – give us new tasks
Łukasz Piwowar, Ph.D., an academic worker of the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Wroclaw, worked for the Polish division of the British company Imagination Technologies (which co-operates, for instance, with Apple in the field of research on relay processors. ‘We achieved very good results, which I have already reported to the head office of Imagination Technologies,’ says Paweł Patroński, the head of the Wroclaw division. ‘I hope that the company will entrust us with even more important tasks relating to new technologies. Wroclaw has a huge potential, good universities and an increasing number of excellently educated specialists with whom we could certainly cope with such tasks.’
Altogether, thanks to the fulfilment of partnerships in the 2nd edition of the Mozart programme, 20 new jobs and 45 new products and technological and management-related solutions were created. In addition, around 90 students completed internships and several diploma theses were prepared.
