On the sidelines of the Fifth Meeting of the China-UK High-Level People-to-People Dialogue, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the UK jointly organized a number of China-UK science and innovation cooperation events on December 6, 2017. The UK-China Industry Academia Partnership Program (IAPP) Workshop jointly organized by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering was one of the important events. Ye Dongbai, Director-General of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Science and Technology attended and addressed the meeting. 

Within the framework of the China-UK Research and Innovation Partnership Fund established under the leadership of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (formerly the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) of the UK, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering launched IAPP cooperation in 2017. The theme of the workshop was “Fostering Breakthrough Innovation through Business-University Linkages: It’s all About the People”. Some 70 people from the relevant Chinese and UK government departments, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering, IAPP implementation organizations, universities and enterprises in both countries attended the meeting. 

During the workshop, representatives of IAPP project implementation organizations introduced the progress of their respective projects, shared their experience and understanding of industry-academia cooperation, and exchanged views with British experts on the challenges which they came across during implementation of the project and how to better push forward project implementation. In addition, delegates from the two countries also held roundtable discussions on collaborative innovation between industry and academia and exchanged views on the importance of people in innovation cooperation, the complexity of public support for innovation systems, intermediary services for industry-academia collaborative innovation, government financial support, technology transfer and government innovation strategy. This workshop is of positive significance for promoting China-UK cooperation in collaborative industry-academia innovation and for raising both countries’ capacity to commercialize research results.