Academe prepares students for careers, and faculty can offer support to those who use control. The practice (industry) can offer support to academe in many ways. Both sides have incentives to enhance collaboration. The collaboration might be on research investigations, or undergraduate education or, on any control/automation aspect that bridges the gap.
Last year, ControlGlobal.com readers shared their views of the essential topics that they think should be covered in academe in a survey from the Practice-Academic Interaction Taskforce of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), in collaboration with the International Society of Automation (ISA). From that survey, which was also given to those in academe, the IFAC and ISA found that there was some overlap between the practice and academic view of essential topics, but there also was a great deal of nonoverlapping topics.
As the IFAC looks to continue to bridge the gap between academe and practice-related control, it is now analyzing initiatives that integrate the two, such as seminars, research/development collaboration, short courses, curriculum participation, etc. In line with this, the IFAC, again in collaboration with the ISA, is asking for feedback from industry on which of these initiatives work, and which don’t work.
The objective of this latest survey is to facilitate academic/practice collaboration on control and automation topics. As with the previous survey, the results of this survey will be presented to the academic community in hopes of providing insight that will improve collaborations in the future.
If you have experience with such collaborations, you’re invited to share what works and what hinders collaboration in this survey, which will help the IFAC compile and disseminate best practices.
The survey can take between 5 and 30 minutes, depending on how much information you wish to provide. It will remain open through March 31 and can be accessed here.
