Stephan Reiff-Marganiec: Business Activities
- I am Director of the Leicester Innovation Hub
- Innovation Partnerships:
Innovation Partnerships are an ERDF funded opportunity to reduce the threshold for SMEs to engage with academia. I have been involved directly in the execution of a number of such projects, notably projects with:
- Questmark: the project investigated better business process support to streamline the backoffice systems. I provided guidance to the placed graduate and helped shape the project.
- ESB: the project investigated a web system for management of food safety processes. I provided guidance to the placed graduate and helped shape the project. For more information on how this helped the company's vision see this press release.
- VDT: the project (which led to several follow on projects discharged through student projects) investigated polling of alarm devices and led to the development of mobile security solutions. The project has led to a big change in focus for VDT, see for example Professional Security or The Daily Express.
- Hunter's Software: Hunters developed a desktop based solution for asset management and the project helped through academic consultancy, employee training and a placement student in the modernisation of the software architecture and the migration of the application to the cloud. I advised on different options of available web technologies and how these could be used as well as some aspects of software architecture modernisation.
- Call Aid UK: The project investigated mobile solutions for access control and patient admittance into hospitals. The support was delivered through consultancy and employee secondment (Company -> University for training).
- Shelton Vision Ltd (ongoing): the project is investigating software architecture modernisation in the area of visual textile inspection. Support is through academic consultancy and an employee secondment (Company -> University for training).
- SME Support to Growth: I am co-director of the ERDF PA2 funded project SME Support to Growth.
SME Support to Growth provides support to Leicester City SMEs to increase or develop their export potential. The support is based on expertise available in the University, bridging skills across departments and colleges. The project provides support through business projects (graduate student projects), academic consultancy and graduate placements.
- sKTP with Comtec: I was leading an sKTP project to improve the business process support for the translation company Comtec. Please see a press release.
- Student Projects with Industry: I have been supervising MSc projects with Industrial partners, which usually explore more open ended questions of feasibility related to some business matter.
I have taken on the role of Departmental Business Fellow in autumn 2010. This is reflecting my interest of reaching out to industry to apply research. My industrial activities were already evidenced in the sKTP with Comtec (that I held in early 2010) and my involvement with the Leg2Net project from (EU Marie Curie People Action; 2004 to 2008), as well as various other activities in my professional past. In this role, I have been an embassador for departmental research exploring opportunities with companies where research in the department can contribute to the growth of the company as well as identifying where such businesses' needs can generate demand for new research.
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