With business leaders facing pressure to innovate to attract customers and government funding, the University of Ottawa has created a new role to connect industry with advanced research.
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With business leaders facing pressure to innovate to attract customers and government funding, the University of Ottawa has created a new role to connect industry with advanced research.
Earlier this month, the university’s president and vice-chancellor Marie-Eve Sylvestre appointed Blair Patacairk to help expand those partnerships. Over the past 20 years, Patacairk has held leadership roles at Invest Ottawa, Telecom Gateway Services and CENGN, specializing in economic development, foreign investment, and trade and government relations.
In his new role as the president’s special adviser on relationships with industry, he’ll be responsible for identifying opportunities to bring key research efforts to the forefront by partnering with leading companies.
Last week, Patacairk told OBJ that rapid technological advancement and economic uncertainty, combined with geopolitical tensions, have prompted increased federal investment in certain fields. As a result, more is being asked of industry leaders in sectors such as defence, technology, life sciences and medicine.
But, he said, few of those leaders have the capacity to undertake the level of research needed.
“We’re a research-intensive university sitting here doing theoretical research that can be applied to the real-world situations currently going on,” Patacairk said. “As great as companies are — and they are amazing at doing research — a lot of them rely on relationships with the University of Ottawa, for example.”
According to uOttawa, the university currently works with 700 industry partners. Each year, the university enters into 200 collaboration agreements and generates more than 35 patents.
Patacairk has been involved in partnership efforts since he joined the university four years ago as executive adviser to the vice-president of research and innovation. The new role, he said, is an extension of that work.
“It’s a pretty clear directional move by the president to say, we’re in the game with partnerships,” he said. “We’re in the game of doing research and getting it off the bench and into commercialization.”
Because of the magnitude of the current challenges, Patacairk said there are opportunities for researchers to get involved with industry efforts earlier in the process. There are also opportunities for typically siloed departments within the university to collaborate.
“It’s not just industry that’s going to lead,” he said. “Researchers need to be part of this whole narrative now, and a big part of it. If you start looking at the faculties and start finding out all the things we’re doing, you start realizing we have a lot to offer and it’s a bit of a puzzle putting it together.”
He added that, throughout his career, he has learned how to communicate in academic, business and government settings. That skill, he said, will be necessary to highlight the value proposition of research efforts to industry leaders who might not be able to conceptualize potential applications.
Patacairk added that now is the time for universities to get involved and build up their partnership ecosystem.
“Timing is everything,” he said. “We’re at the right time, in the right place to get things done. We’re going to see some pretty amazing things happen with the university.”
