Collaboration
OSIT - Santa Anna stakeholder group
Some companies and organizations, who have a long history of collaborating with SICS, have chosen to join Santa Anna stakeholder group OSIT (Östsvenska IT-föreningen). As members of OSIT, these organizations contribute funds for joint R&D activities and in return they get to influence the strategic direction of Santa Anna.
Publicly funded research projects
The most common way in which companies and other organizations collaborate with the institutes in the SICS-group is through publicly funded research projects. These projects are typically funded by either Swedish research funds or by the European Commission. In either case, Sana Anna has good knowledge of currently available funds and how the process of applying works. The funders typically require that the company or organization invest their own time (and sometimes cash) while they fund the research organization, i.e. Santa Anna. The benefit of this model for the customer is that they can get significant leverage on their own investment. The main drawbacks are a significant risk of investing time in the application with no guarantee of actually getting a project funded and the requirement to adapt the content of the project to the focus of the call. Also, if confidentiality or exclusive ownership of intellectual property rights are important, this may be difficult to achieve in publicly funded projects.
Contract research
The typical situation where contract research may be appropriate is when a company or organization has a specific challenge for which they believe there may be a solution in the realm of computer science research. From the customer's perspective, the benefits of contract research vs. other forms of collaboration include 100% focus on their specific problem, confidentiality, ownership of intellectual property rights, and no time wasted on applying for public funds, which may or may not materialize.
Centers of Excellence
In recent years, so called 'Centers of Excellence' have become a popular way for research funding organizations to fund research. In a center of Excellence, one or more research organizations cooperate closely with a defined group of companies and other organizations according to a long term research plan and with a common responsibility for commercialing results. Santa Anna has taken important initiatives, for instance in the area of "Public Information Services and Electronic Markets - PuMa" and in "ICT for distributed health care - EveryCare".
Special initiatives
Currently, Santa Anna is exploring a new form of collaboration with companies and organizations, namely the 'Applied ICT Innovation Initiative" together with Linköping University. Within this initiative various forms of activities promoting technology tranfer and competence development ar promoted, for instance creation of R&D consortia in special areas, initiation of "concipiation procjects", i.e. projects in a state before moving to a busniness incubator, etc.
Seminars and educational activites
Santa Anna also runs a program for collaborative competence development, jointly with Linköping university. Special courses, for instance in IT Project Management, are offered with joint participation from industry and doctoral or master's level students.
We also cooperate with the East Chpter of Dataföreningen i Sverige, running special interest networks and arranging seminars and workshops.
A big event for the SICS group is SICS Open House day in Kista. At Open House, a large number of talks are given by both SICS researchers and external speakers. Furthermore, all research groups exhibit their results and prototypes and are available for informal discussions.
Santa Anna Research Faculty and the other researchers with expertise on a variety of subjects are also available for speaking engagements at other organizations' conferences and seminars.
Software
Many research projects develop software prototypes, and occasionally the software is further developed to be released either as open source or as a commercial product.
If you would like more information about collaboration with Santa Anna, or if you have an idea that you want to discuss, do not hesitate to contactSture Hägglund.