The IDRE Initiative:
Innovation Driven Research EducationIDRE: Innovation Driven Research Education
Rationale
Engineering research in Sweden obviously involves a lot of talented and creative people who, in a competitive environment, produce scientific results
which are often recognized as being of high international standard. At the same time it is often claimed that the resulting level of innovation
(commercial success based on scientific findings) is not sufficient. Since postgraduate education constitutes a major resource to engineering research,
PIEp hypothesizes that a change in the way research education is initiated, planned and carried out will lead to substantially improved education system
performance in terms of result utilization and innovation. Ultimately, the intrinsic curiosity and talent of the people involved should result in more
patents, products and business. This is the rationale of the PIEp IDRE Initiative.
Objectives
At full pace, the first round of PIEp IDRE will cover five research projects including nine PhD students at four of the PIEp nodes. As at May 2010,
four of these projects are up and running (
see below), with one yet to be fully defined and initiated. Half of the involved PhD students are funded from the PIEp
program and the others are co-funded through other sources. All students and their supervisors are following and contributing to the concept of
innovation driven research education which puts equal priority on both science and innovation.
The ambition within PIEp is to extend PIEp IDRE with yet more product-oriented research projects, such that we can meet the overall goals of the
IDRE initiative across the lifetime of PIEp. This will involve:
Creating at least ten products and/or companies,
Developing and implementing a new and sustainable research education concept,
Applying innovation process research for monitoring, reflection, learning, improvement and validation of the IDRE concept.
Implementation
Through IDRE, we are implementing a new type and structure of innovation driven research. Within PIEp, this innovation of the research education
system is strongly linked to PIEp EDU and to the
PIEp Research School. All IDRE
students are engaged in the PIEp Research School and a special CIG (
Common Interest Group)
is set up for IDRE related issues. Since one goal of an IDRE-funded PhD student project is to actively promote patenting and build-up of spin-off companies,
IDRE will also utilize and contribute to PIEp Innovation MarketPlace.
IDRE is managed by a project leader,
Professor Jan Wikander,
and a five-member steering group with substantial experience in taking research results to commercialization.
On top of the carefully selected research projects, IDRE will also work with supporting courses and literature, a framework and mechanisms for research
student supervision and coaching by engaging all the student supervisors in a network and by occasionally engaging external experts and the steering group members.
IDRE Projects
In this first round, the IDRE projects are all related to research on the borderline between medical, technical and clinical research:
Restoring vision disorders through infra-red stimulation of the visual cortex
Node: CTMH [September 2008 - August 2012]
PhD Student Rickard Axelsson, working with Supervisor Hans von Holst
See also
Project Reflections (Nov09)
Medical diagnostics using spectroscopy
Node: LTH (Dept of Atomic Physics) [January 2009 - June 2011]
*
LED based spectroscopy for optical diagnostics of solids and liquids,
PhD Student
Mikkel Brydegaard working with Supervisor Sune Svanberg and Katarina Svanberg,
*
Sinus diagnosis based on diode laser spectroscopic technique GASMAS (measuring gas inside solids and liquids),
PhD Student
Märta Lewander, working with Supervisors Sune Svanberg and Katarina Svanberg.
Simulation of surgical procedures with haptic feedback
Nodes: KTH (Dept of Machine Design) and
CTMH [October 2009 - March 2011]
PhD Students
Magnus Eriksson
and
Suleman Khan (KTH),
working with Supervisors Jan Wikander and Kjell Andersson (KTH) and Hans von Holst (CTMH)
Multiplex disease marker diagnostics based on the ISET platform
Nodes:LTH (Dept of Electrical Measurements) and
KTH (Dept of Proteomics) [December 2009 - November 2014]
PhD Students
Belinda Adler (LTH) and Tove Boström (KTH), working with Supervisors
Thomas Laurell (LTH) and
Sophia Hober (KTH)
News articles from IDRE Projects so far:
New Method for Malaria Diagnosis
(We are always pleased to hear from you if you spot PIEp in the press!
Please email us: vicki@ PIEp.se)
Go from here to:
PIEp Research School
PIEp Project Portfolio and
Publications List
[Last updated: 7 June 2010]
