Research collaboration accelerator

The new University of Helsinki R&D Accelerator is a smooth and fast channel for companies to engage in business collaboration with our researchers. Tell us to which questions you want to find solutions with the help of research. We will bring together researchers from different disciplines to examine the challenge from a variety of perspectives alongside experts from your company and produce a complete collaboration plan.

What is R&D Accelerator?

The idea is to quickly identify how research conducted at the University of Helsinki can help your company develop its business. Tell us about your themes or challenges requiring perspectives and solutions based on research. We will bring together researchers from relevant fields around the challenge and spar them for collaboration. Our researchers will investigate how research could answer the questions of interest to your business. At the end of the accelerator, you will get to choose the best research idea, on the basis of which a joint collaboration plan will be drawn up – and then the project is ready for launch!

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for businesses to find out what surprises a multidisciplinary approach can bring to their challenges.

Why should businesses participate in the accelerator?

An easy, one to two month ‘acceleration lane’ will provide your company with a flying start to business–researcher collaboration. For the short sprint, you will need a handful of experts from your company who are willing to invest a few hours of their time in the accelerator.

R&D Accelerator provides an overview of the research perspectives relevant to your business and the future perspectives and trends related to the topic. At the same time, you will get to acquaint yourself with scholars interested in collaboration from a variety of disciplines. As a multidisciplinary university, we are able to offer several perspectives complementing each other for your problem.

Participation in R&D Accelerator is free and does not bind your business to any follow-up projects. At the end of the accelerator, you will decide how to utilise the results of R&D Accelerator: for example, do you wish to apply for joint project funding or join forces with future experts studying at the University of Helsinki?

Collaboration with the University of Helsinki has given our development a significant boost. Many dysfunctional processes have been effectively eliminated with the help of the University’s extensive experience and knowledge.

Multidisciplinary solutions to wicked problems

Collaboration between businesses and researchers helps Finland to renew and grow in a sustainable manner. It brings inventions that revolutionise everyday life into people’s reach – be it drugs saving lives, technologies curbing carbon dioxide emissions or innovations supporting democracy.

As we speak, researchers at the University of Helsinki are looking for innovative answers to a range of challenges in collaboration with businesses in a variety of disciplines. Below are some examples of collaborative projects between businesses and researchers.

This is how an R&D Accelerator proceeds