NUI MAYNOOTH is aiming to build relationships with business and take a more market-informed approach to its research, according to the university’s director of commercialisation.

Dr John Scanlan said both academia and industry could benefit from closer ties and it was important the work done by researchers was practical. He was speaking following the university’s second Connect networking event this week, during which 250 executives and entrepreneurs met academics to discuss research partnerships and funding opportunities.

The biannual event was first held in 2009. Dr Scanlan said its aim was to encourage businesses to come to the university with their problems to see if it could find solutions.

“The universities spent a lot of time doing research and we want to make sure that research is market informed,” he added. “Probably more importantly, industry will see from Connect that we want to work on their problems if they are willing to present them to us.”

Six speakers outlined some recent work relating to the university.

One was Kieran Daly, business development vice-president at Shimmer Research. Shimmer specialises in wearable sensor pads that can monitor a patient and wirelessly transmit data back to a hospital.

“We had the hardware right,” Mr Daly said, “but what we didn’t have strength in was the whole area of cloud computing to push this data . . . Through the Connect event [in 2009] we connected to Tomás Ward and from that initial discussion, we ended up working together for six months on the product.”

Asked how effective was this approach to building a profile, Dr Scanlan said its first run in 2009 did help to build relationships and the same would be expected this time.