Dame Ann Dowling — the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering — has been asked by Greg Clark — the Minister for Universities, Science and Cities — to lead a review examining how the Government can better support relationships between the UK’s businesses and its university researchers.

Mr Clark said: “The Academy will be looking to both the private and academic sector to come forward and share their experiences in managing collaborations and ventures with each other and to suggest how the Government can help to facilitate productive relationships.”

Dame Ann said: “I am delighted that the Government is committed to improving the relationships between UK businesses and its outstanding university research capabilities, and I am honoured to be leading this important review.

“University researchers can be inspired by areas or developments that would make a long-term difference to a particular company or sector, leading to challenging and innovative research. This, in turn, can give industry the confidence to invest more in UK research and facilitate the flow of innovation between academic researchers and industry.

“Some companies already foster such strategic relationships with academia and derive substantial benefits from them. We want to understand the barriers for others and make concrete recommendations about how they can be overcome to deliver broad benefits to the UK in the long term.

“We want to hear from individuals and organisations that are involved in business-academia collaborations about the successes and challenges that they have faced in building productive on-going relationships; we also want to hear from those that did not succeed. To make a parallel with the world of research, negative results are still very valuable; they will be essential in generating a comprehensive body of evidence.”

Any business or academic institution that wishes to contribute to the review should e-mail its submission to .