Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) cooperates actively with the Industry encouraging the cross-sectorial transfer of knowledge between public and private organisations in order to imbed more innovation into research and to anticipate future needs and supply of skills in Europe. Enterprises already collaborating with UPM are national, non-national or international, and of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as large ones. This experience resulted in the launching in 2008 of Industry-University Chairs (“Cátedras Universidad-Empresa”). The number of these Chairs is currently 80, and includes enterprises such as IBM, REPSOL, Telefónica, Fertiberia, INDRA, ACCIONA, ITP, EADS, Banco Santander, T-systems, GMV, Iberdrola, Orange, Alcatel.
UPM proposes to launch a new career development programme to pilot innovation, PILOT-INN, with the objective of training internationally mobile and industrial-driven researchers. To ensure the international dimension of the programme PILOT-INN will offer three types of mobility schemes. The schemes are foreseen to incorporate 10 Experienced Researchers: 4 Incoming, 4 Re-integration, and 2 Outgoing; all fellowships will be of 2-year duration. The experienced researchers will be incorporated within UPM’s Research Groups, Research Centres or Institutes and in the enterprises that work on a joint industry-academia project within the Industry-University Chairs, in a research line which best fits their career objectives thus providing them with the meaningful exposure to the private sector. The outgoing researchers will spend a minimum of 18 months working outside Spain in the country and location, at a Joint Lab or Industrial RDI department, proposed by the Chairs (i.e.: co-proposed by UPM and the Industry).