Speaker
Description
ED MITCHELL1
1 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Business Development Office, Grenoble, France)
Corresponding author: Ed Mitchell, mitchell@esrf.eu
Keywords: innovation, industry,
Theme: African Light Source session
The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) has worked with industry from even before the first light was delivered in 1994. The ESRF’s Business Development Office (BDO) is now charged with managing interactions with industry from service sales, patents, licences to collaborations and partnerships. The BDO is an internal service of the ESRF, positioned in the Experiments Division. The main activity to date is managing and developing beam time sales, though this is changing. At the ESRF industrial service sales earn about 2.5MEuros annually with the strongest sector being pharma and biotech. One of the current challenges is to deepen our relationship with industry to more than a simple client-supplier relationship. There are many opportunities for this, though grants and networks; the main limitations are in building awareness and understanding in industry (both large and small), and having staff available to do industrial liaison and support work. The presentation will look at the role of industry at the ESRF and how our facilities and expertise support industry research and innovation.
