Industry-Academia Research Collaborations During and After COVID-19

Abstract

There exists a long-standing challenge of building successful research collaborations between industry and academia in software engineering. There are multiple reasons contributing to this issue, including different timelines, impact metrics, expectations, and perceptions of researchers and practitioners, altogether leading to the issue known as the industryacademia collaboration gap. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most researchers and practitioners were sent to work from home, relying on virtual collaboration with their peers, which might have given rise to an even wider industry-academia collaboration gap. At the 8th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice, held virtually at the International Conference on Software Engineering 2021, we investigate the impact that working from home has had on research collaborations between industry and academia. We also take a look at how remote work may change research collaborations in the future. In this report, we present takeaways from keynote talks on this matter, share insights from the panel of six experts on the topic of industry-academia collaborations, and finally summarize findings from related paper presentations.