Universities join forces to strengthen Swedish industry

As digitization continues to transform the fundamental conditions and opportunities for industry, keeping up with these developments requires new knowledge, inspiration and innovation. Five universities in Sweden are joining forces in a new national industrial graduate school in the field of Industry 4.0 or smart industry. 

The plan is that the new industrial graduate school at University West, the University of Skövde, Jönköping University, Halmstad University and Mid Sweden University will start up in spring 2020 in close cooperation with the Knowledge Foundation. That will make it the biggest industrial graduate school in Sweden in the field of Smart Industry. It targets companies that want to strengthen their competitiveness by shaping the development of the key figures of the future in industrial development with new valuable skills linked to smart industry or Industry 4.0. 

Through the graduate school, companies can build strong networks in their industry and between the universities, and also share in large quantities of research results. It is founded on close collaboration between industry and academia. A total of 40 places will be distributed among the five universities.  Although the doctoral student is admitted to one of these universities, the associated company can be located anywhere in the country. 

Five specialisations
The breadth of research in the graduate school will be unique in its kind with enormous potential because it brings together the smart industry research excellence of the five universities. The company and the University formulate the research project together. The industrial graduate school focuses on five areas of development which are of great importance to the future of industry: 

New business opportunities
With 40 research projects running in parallel and touching on each other’s areas, the companies and the universities will gain access to a comprehensive range of research results. The school also provides a valuable network in which companies and doctoral students can make new contacts and generate new collaborations and possibly even new business opportunities. Experience gained from previous industrial research schools shows that the majority of the doctoral students continue their employment at the collaborating company after graduation.