Higher Education Partnerships Programme

Many technology transfer (TT) offices in universities, research institutes and other public research organisations, as well as a significant number of newly established initiatives that support TT, lack staff with appropriate practical training and enough professional experience to make a success of the TT process in bringing promising R&D results to market. Encouraging and where appropriate incentivising partnerships between the UK universities’ with Malaysian universities’ TT offices (TTOs) to share their expertise and best practices will help boost Malaysia’s ability to turn scientific knowledge into new, commercialised products and services. In addition, bringing the UK universities into contact will help foster more cross-border research collaborations and increase international research and industry networks.

The objectives of this workshop :-

• Define the scope of the policy recommendations, the ownership and decision-making process and the governance process;
• Identify barriers, challenges and drivers in technology transfer and R&D within Malaysian HEIs;and
• Develop a capacity-building strategy and consequent sustainable implementation plan that makes use of techniques such as (but not necessarily limited to) secondments, coaching, mentoring, workshops, courses, training materials, social media and other forms of exchanging and transferring best practices.

This workshop focuses on the development of partnerships between UK and Malaysian universities that can contribute to the development of technology transfer practice and outcomes. It follows the issuing of a Call by the British Council, and responses from UK universities, as well as the selection of local Higher Education Institutions and relevant agencies by the Malaysian Ministry of Education.

The British Council opens calls to both UK and Malaysian HEIs and relevant bodies to develop UK-Malaysia Higher Education Partnership to support the sustainability of Technology Transfer and Research Management in HEIs. Among opportunities expected from this partnership :

• Increased knowledge on the sustainability of technology transfer and R&D management among universities and other stakeholders (ministry, industry etc.);
• Increased UK-Malaysia partnerships in Higher Education;
•  Increased opportunities for mobility/exchanges for students and faculty of UK and Malaysian universities; and
•  Increased opportunities for international placement of UK students in Malaysian industries.

The aim of this workshop is to monitor and evaluate the overall development and progress of the nine Higher Education Partnerships Programme (HEP). This workshop has given the opportunities for all nine partnerships project lead to briefly updated their programme, and receive some feedback and comments from the partners as well as other project leads for improvement and future development of their activities.