Keywords: networking

Main users: Students

At SCIENCE POP UP EXPO we create a meeting place for PhD-students and researchers from the university and the companies in the Science Park. At this reversed fair the students and researchers exhibit and the companies are the visitors. The aim; to find new research partners, projects or job opportunities.

Through the SCIENCE POP UP EXPO, we want to build bridges between the university and the companies in Linköping Science Park. The lack of talent is a challenge that many companies front these days. As a Science Park we try to find new ways for the companies to attract the right talents. Researchers and PhD-students are a group of talents that maybe not is top of mind for all the companies. By creating an easy meeting place, we hope that companies and talents find each other. Also, many of the companies in Linköping Science Park have a strong R&D, by connecting the university with the companies in an easy way we hope to support the companies in their R&D.

During the SCIENCE POP UP EXPO around 20 PhD-students and researchers showed their work. 100 interested business representatives and students visit the event and met the exhibitors. Afterwards we followed up with the companies that attended the event, around 5-10 research projects were interested for the companies and a contact between the researchers and PhD-students was made.

By arranging the SCIENCE POP UP EXPO as a reversed fair, where the researchers and PhD-students exhibit instead of the companies, we created an innovative way of meeting. We find out that this way makes both the exhibitors and the visitors more active finding information. To give all the exhibitors the same conditions and not burden them with too much job we gathered information about their projects and research and printed sheets with this information. This also made it easy for the visitors to find the same information for all the exhibitors. It also made a nice, visual, impression.

The main users of the SCIENCE POP UP EXPO are partly the PhD-students and researchers at Linköping University and partly the 400 companies in Linköping Science Park.

The SCIENCE POP UP EXPO is a collaboration between the Science Park management and the PhD-Association at Linköping University.