Accelerating innovation

What is AIMday?

AIMday has one objective – to match the needs of organisations for new knowledge with academic expertise.

One question. One hour. Endless possibilities.

AIMday stands for Academic Industry Meeting day. What makes AIMday truly special is the format of that meeting. Specific questions raised by external organisations form the meeting day agenda. The university then matches these requests with the academic expertise at their disposal. The outcome is a day filled with a series of ‘one question, one hour’ workshops where teams of approximately five to ten individuals sit around a table to candidly discuss each topic.

It’s an exchange of knowledge and ideas focused on finding novel approaches to real-world challenges. It’s simply the idea that a broad mix of academics can provide different perspectives and surprising new avenues to solving problems – and thereby create favourable conditions for continued cooperation between external organisations and academia.

Registration for AIMday is free of charge.

Swedish synergy made possible

AIMday is developed and trademarked by Uppsala University in Sweden. It is available to academic institutions worldwide.

Current AIMday partners

The Event. The Network. The Knowledge.

AIMday is not like any networking event you have been to before. It is filled with people from various disciplines and sectors. A look around and you will notice participants spanning from young doctoral students to experienced professors and company CEOs. All brought together around a topic of common interest. AIMday is a forum filled with knowledge and a willingness to listen, learn, ask questions, and give or find answers. Join AIMday to experience knowledge-exchange that works.

An event on university campus

An AIMday event is run by one or more universities and takes place on university campus. It’s usually a full-day event that starts around 9 in the morning and ends around 4 in the afternoon. Your personalised schedule will inform you about the exact times for the workshops you are attending. If you do not have a full-day programme, you are still welcome to stay all day and enjoy the ambience and ample opportunities to network. University staff will welcome you at an open-all-day registration desk ready to help you find your way when you arrive.

Personalised schedule

All AIMday participants will receive their personalised schedule in advance. How your personal programme looks depends on a number of things, such as the number of questions you have sumbitted (if you are an organisation’s representative), how many questions you have signed up for (if you are an academic), and the matchmaking optimisation performed by the organising university. Regardless, you can be rest assured that the university AIMday host has done their very best to ensure that you have the most productive and effective day possible.

Parallel workshops

AIMday is organised as a series of individual workshops within the full-day time frame, with teams on each side of the table discussing submitted questions based on the event’s chosen theme. Each question is discussed for one hour. No more, no less. To maximise the efficiency of the event, individual workshops are run in parallel, distributed over a maximum of four sessions during the day. In that way, an AIMday can include about 20 individual workshops.

Workshop structure

Each workshop maintains a certain structure:

Introductions
Question overview and background
Discussion
Wrap up

Group discussions are usually supported by a dedicated workshop facilitator. The size of the group is small – five to twelve individuals – including the organisation’s representatives and academics who have specific competence and research interest within the topic.

Making contacts and networking

During AIMday there are ample opportunities to mingle informally and have spontaneous meetings. Many rewarding contacts are forged here. Coffee is served all day and a tasty lunch is always included.

Take the opportunity to chat over a cup of coffee or tea and exchange contact details during lunch break.

Why AIMday?

Universities

Academic-Industry knowledge exchange that really works. Take on real-world challenges and deliver fresh understanding and perspectives that may help solve them.

Organisations

Your need for new knowledge is matched with academic expertise. Benefit from direct, highly-qualified feedback on your actual challenges, while developing key academic contacts.

Academics

Take part in multi-disciplinary discussions on questions from external organisations and gain new insights into their challenges and need for new knowledge in your area of expertise.