The Social Sciences and Humanities centres of CERCA system work on transfer and innovation with Dr. Jessica Meijer

On May 27th and 28th, the social sciences and humanities centres of the CERCA system worked with Jessica Meijer, head of innovation and business development at LURIS, the transfer unit of Leiden University, as part of the programme to promote innovation and transfer started in January.

The aim of the programme is promoting innovation and transfer activities according to the specificities of these centres. It is accompanied by training and mirrors the way transfer is done in European research institutions.

In one-to-one sessions, Meijer reviewed the Krazy Action Plans created by the centres. “They have come up with crazy ideas and have allowed themselves to fail”, told the Dutch researcher. Among the proposals, there are communication projects to enhance transfer, podcast series and research projects made in collaboration with STEM centres.

The programme included a training session by Meijer, which was about the importance of patenting ideas and the meaning of patents in the social sciences and humanities. The session on impact policies was run by Nicky Buckley, from the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

New Computational Social Sciences programme in the BSC

Mariona Sanz and Mercè Crosas from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center presented a project which combines applications of data and supercomputing in social science research. Crosas: “It’s just taking off; we are open to new collaborations and want to work on transfer in an ethic and responsible way”.