Industry Exchange Network - IXN

The Industry Exchange Network (IXN) was created at UCL by Dr Dean Mohamedally (UCL Computer Science), Dr Graham Roberts (UCL Computer Science) and Geoff Hughes (Microsoft UK) in 2011, as an educational methodology that enables consultancy training of students engaging on real-world problem based learning through term-based client projects. This initial partnership with Microsoft allowed the UCL IXN to match UCL students to industry projects hosted by Microsoft’s client base.  After five years the range of companies and aspirations of the projects has expanded widely.

The UCL IXN is a pipeline matching industry projects of different levels with students ranging from BSc 1st year students working on Apps Design through to MSc level working on more advanced Data Science projects.  The client projects are driven by 6 key areas, listed in order of priorities: (1) charitable works, (2) healthcare sectors, (3) research-steered development, (4) SME/entrepreneurship development, (5) larger scale commercial projects and (6) public sector/policy driven projects.

Industry partner clients suggest projects that are capable of running strictly to term-times. Each project has a named technical mentor from the company, and a supervisor allocated from UCL. The IXN projects are formally assessed on a UCL module, and the UCL supervisor will lead in the final academic marking of the project. PhD student teaching assistants are also involved in support of the lab time of the in-term projects.

All Intellectual Property of the project remains with the client, and clients know to expect proof-of-concept level results from the projects. Several interviews and discussions take place from the UCL IXN with the client involved. A formal agreement between UCL and the client is arranged ahead of the start of the term based project. Achievements in this domain have demonstrated that the gains for commercial entities and industry partners are a genuine business asset which are often contribute to further development work. 

In exchange, students have access to four key criteria from the clients; (1) a named technical mentor in the company to check their progress (2) technical documentation, source code and data on the existing project subject matter if any  (or a subset project of a larger commercial project specifically for them) (3) tools and software platforms under educational licence use, which often becomes transformational into robust customer accounts and (4) additional specialist technical support if needed from the company.

UCL was ranked 1st place for Computer Science in the 2014 REF, and we are committed to providing our students with the skills for the future market place. Working with real-world problem based learning, leading software tools, and professional mentors in industry alongside academic support, provides invaluable experience for the students and their careers. UCL Computer Science has had over over 1200 students on the IXN since it began, and 340 students on the UCL IXN working with clients in 2015. Over 70 apps have been in development with UCL researchers across the university alone in 2015-2016 and several events of recognition of the students works are held yearly including awards by the British Computer Society. The scheme is in expansion to reach across other disciplines as mixed engineering teams and collaborations are underway with other universities internationally.

A few of our partners and collaborators include:

CLIENT BENEFITS

Clients of the IXN achieve significant benefits.
• High Quality Projects: Using a student team allows companies to accomplish substantial results even for proof of concept level of development work. Students will analyse the clients requirements and business needs and prototype code with extensive functionality. A comprehensive literature review of suitable products and a recommendation indicating which solution offers the best value is a part of this requirements cycle. All intellectual property produced by the project, including code, reports, APIs, examples/tech demos and experiments becomes the property of the company.
• Evaluation of Potential Employees: Many students have been hired by clients upon graduation because of the excellent work performed during term time.
• Direct involvement of university academics: Direct involvement of university academics: Companies invest time to get to know academics and form ties to research that can lead to consulting.
• Exposure to cutting-edge research and development: Companies can explore new opportunities that their full-time staff does not have time to investigate. In addition, the outside perspective of the university team may facilitate exploration of situations which would create conflict if the company’s full-time staff explored it.
• Public Relations and Corporate Responsibility Engagement: Through public events like the Apps Awards Day and Proof of Concepts Demo Day, companies will be able to increase visibility at UCL for future hiring and corporate community relations.