Professor Dame Ann Dowling, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering sets out her plan to review how best to support the development of relationships between UK businesses and university researchers

Engineers are drivers of innovation and competitiveness. Engineers have the skills and ability to tackle the grandest of challenges and find solutions that work.  Whether in research, technology, business or policy, we are equipped to analyse problems, synthesise solutions, manage projects that create the right outcomes and turn those experiences into new opportunities.  

With this in mind, my first major challenge as President of the Royal Academy of Engineering is to lead a review advising government on how best to support the development of productive relationships between UK businesses and UK university researchers. We are collecting evidence from both the private and academic sectors on how people have managed collaborations and ventures and suggestions for how government can help facilitate the process in the future.

"I want to help businesses and academia to better understand each other’s needs, interests and constraints and to develop trusting relationships which will allow them to share long-term strategic plans."

I want to help businesses and academia to better understand each other’s needs, interests and constraints and to develop trusting relationships which will allow them to share long-term strategic plans. We are looking at the implications right across research disciplines and businesses of different sizes, types and sectors.

We also want to hear from those who did not succeed.  As in the world of research, a negative result is still a very valuable result and will be essential in generating a comprehensive body of evidence.

Engineering is a magnet for other innovation related skillsets and sectors with higher concentrations of engineering related skills. But this represents another great challenge for our profession: we have a major skills shortage. EngineeringUK estimates that by 2022 the UK will need at least 1.82M people with engineering skills.

We need to inspire many more young people to take up careers in these crucial areas, which will pave the way for our future economic development. We must also improve inclusion in the sector – only 7% of engineering professionals in the UK are female. The Academy’s Diversity Leadership Group is working hard to remove obstacles and encourage more women and other underrepresented groups to join our profession.

For more information or to submit evidence
to the Dowling Review, please see
www.raeng.org.uk/policy/dowling-review

Outshining our global competitors in the 21st century and beyond will involve focusing even harder on the UK’s own, long-standing advantage – engineering innovation – this is the key to enabling the development of world-leading engineered services and products.  

Engineering is evolving all the time. Many of the jobs we will need in 20 years’ time have not been invented yet, just as many of the jobs advertised today did not exist 20 years ago. The spread of mobile technology, the development of composite materials, the sequencing of the genome, the increasing demand for energy, and many other advances have created a huge variety of fascinating new jobs.

For more information or to submit evidence to the Dowling Review, please see www.raeng.org.uk/policy/dowling-review