TEDGlobal 2013 in Edinburgh, Scotland. June 12-15, 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In this 4^th interview of our four-part ECHORD series, conducted last June, Sascha Griffiths from TUM talks to Raffaello D’Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich and technical co-founder of Kiva Systems. The series explores success stories and common obstacles in industry-academia collaborations in the field of robotics, and examines the differences  between these collaborations in the US, Europe and Asia.

[Sascha Griffiths]
Can you describe your background a little? I am especially interested in your transitions between industry and academia. 

[Raffaello D’Andrea]
After getting my PhD at Caltech I became an assistant professor at Cornell University, where I was for ten years. I started the RoboCup program there and we had a RoboCup team that competed there for five years. We won the world championship four times. My area of research is dynamics and control systems, so, for me, robotics was kind of an application area. It’s a good system design problem.

While on sabbatical at MIT in 2003, I met Mick Mountz, an entrepreneur, and he told me about the problem he was trying to solve: distribution. That is when I decided to quit my sabbatical at MIT and join forces with him and Pete Wurman to start Kiva Systems.

In 2008, I officially moved to ETH Zurich but remained on as an advisor at Kiva, and I’ve been here since.

Would you say that Kiva Systems stemmed directly from your research?

No, I wouldn’t say directly. We did fundamental research on controlling robots and controlling dynamical systems. Kiva Systems has a connection to that, but it is not as though my research directly led to Kiva Systems. It was more that the knowledge, experience, and architectures that I learned during RoboCup transitioned into Kiva Systems.

Prof. Asada also mentioned in our interview with him that he thinks the practical character of RoboCup is really important. Do you think that is a good starting point?

Yes, absolutely.  A lot of our first hires at Kiva Systems were former RoboCup students from Cornell University. They learned great skills while they were doing these types of competitions:  how to work in teams and how to work at mechanical, electrical and computer science level issues. There are tight deadlines. You want to get the job done. There are a lot of parallels between doing things in competitions and being successful in the marketplace, and I think that is a great preparation.

Have you been in involved in academia-industry collaborations?

No, in fact I probably have a different view than most people on this topic, especially from most people in Europe. My thinking has been shaped more by the American system, where academia’s focus is on fundamental research. I would like to see more effort to strengthen academia and industry and I think the best way to do it is through entrepreneurs.

What do you think academia can offer to industry in a collaborative project? Do you think there is a reason why collaborations need to take place?

I do. I know a lot of colleagues who work really well with industry. Industry is full of interesting research problems, and it is full of folks who are interested in creating short-term, medium-term, and maybe even long-term gains. So, for them it makes sense to partner with industry. That is one way to do it. I tend to favor the other approach, which is to do fundamental research, and if it is good work, then attract the interest of entrepreneurs who are willing to learn about the new technology. There are also technologists who have an entrepreneurial spirit, who team up with domain experts and figure out how the technology could be used.

Where do you see the hurdles when technology is transferred from academia to the industry? Why do you think the transfer process is so slow?

The reward system in academia is very different to the reward system in industry. In academia, especially if you are doing fundamental research, robustness of what you are doing is not really the primary concern. It is new algorithms, new designs … and you don’t have to worry too much if it doesn’t work all the time. Of course in industry, especially with automation, that is a huge criterion. Systems have to work under different conditions; and they have to work all the time, 24/7. A lot of the time, it is about figuring out what is just a lab demo versus what is ready to be deployed in industry.

How do you think one could speed up the process of getting from the demo to a product that is commercially viable and achieving the robustness you mentioned?

Investment. Having entrepreneurs who understand where the technology is at and what is required to commercialize it, and who seek investment to actually do that process. This investment could come from private money or it could come from public funds, but it’s investment that speeds up the process.  I would favor that mechanism more than just giving money to the industry and academia for collaboration and say “commercialize this technology”. If you have entrepreneurs to lubricate this process, it will speed it up a lot.

You have already mentioned the reward systems. When you think of academic and industrial partners collaborating, how can they measure the success of their collaboration in your opinion?

I think one thing is patents, which are rewarded both in industry and academia. But I also think that a big metric of success is the students that are trained. A lot of the time, if it is a real collaboration between academia and the industry, those folks will transition into industry. I think you have to take a longer-term view than just a few years. You have to understand that if there is a relationship being built, it can form a pipeline of really talented PhDs with skills in that particular area, who then often go to work for that company. That is a huge plus, which is not immediate, but will have its benefits in the medium term.

How would you measure technological progress?

That depends on which way you look at it. If you are viewing it from an academic perspective, again, the reward is if it is getting accepted in top peer-reviewed publications. From the industrial side, the question is whether it is a product. And there is some stuff in between. I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think there is a simple metric. You have to look at the technology: how many years will it take to be commercialized? What impact will it have? Will something else replace it?

Do you know of something at the moment, for example, in the research with quadcopters, where you think that it has really improved the technology?

I think the limiting factor is not the technology, it is good business models. That is what is missing. The technology is quite far along … I think that once people figure out what the right business models are to commercialize this technology, things will move very quickly.

Do you see different models of technology transfer in North America and Europe?

I know Switzerland and I know the United States, and I think they are similar in many ways. If you develop technology at ETH, and it is done during research that is being funded, the inventors get a fraction of it, and the university gets a fraction of it. If students want to commercialize a technology themselves, they can license the technology from the university. If you personally don’t, the university can license it on your behalf. They get a certain fraction of the profits, the inventors get a certain fraction… That is also how it is done in the United States. I think that works well. It has the right incentives; it is not too onerous, where the university claims everything, which disincentives the inventors from doing it because they do not get any benefit. On the other hand, it is only fair that the university should get some rewards for developing technology and it is really leaving it up to the entrepreneurs to take these ideas and commercialize them. I think in that way it is similar. I cannot really talk about the rest of Europe.

Do you see any current trends in robotics, where you think real progress is being made towards commercialization?

I think people are looking at consumer robotics. But I think in the short term, it is going to be traditional manufacturing, helping existing businesses improve their operation through automation and robotics. That is where the potential is, simply because it is still a semi-structured environment. If you sell something to a consumer, it has to work in so many different situations. Every home is completely different. Whereas, if you are selling to a business that is trying to improve their manufacturing capabilities, for example, they have leeway on changing the way things are done, rearranging things, instrumenting things to help their operations. So, that is where I think you will see the big in-roads in robotics and automation.

Are we currently in a situation of increasing the market share and selling more, or are we seeing real progress?

No, I don’t think the market size is increasing. Before, it did not make sense to use automation in certain areas, but now the technology is improving in such a way that it does make sense to do so, and to do so in more industries.

Do you think academics lose interest as soon as something reaches market readiness?

Yes, I think that is the case. Academics are interested in doing fundamental research, and there is a different set of values and constraints when you want to commercialize something. For example, robustness – which I think is actually an interesting topic itself – has a lot of interesting research problems associated with it. They tend to be more at the system level. And I think only a few people are really interested in doing those sorts of things. So, I think, for the most part, academics lose interest. Not all, but a fair amount do.

Do you think that is a good or a bad thing?

I do not think it is a bad thing. I think that, again, you need something in between university research and commercialization to facilitate this process. There are many ways to do that. In Germany and in a lot of other European countries, there are strong industry-university collaborations. In the United States, it is more the entrepreneurial folks that are forming the glue. I tend to like the US model best. I think that it enables the quickest transition. Entrepreneurs are the ones who take on the stuff that is not ready for prime time, so to speak, and actually do it. And it takes investment. So, it is not bad that this happens … because without it, you would not get fundamental research done. So, I think that is perfectly fine.

In your TED talk, you talked about science, engineering, and arts coming together. I think you did not mention business and industry as such. Do you see these worlds connecting well or do you think they are all individual communities that tend to not communicate?

I think that they are separate entities, but there are people who are always at the overlap. You need enough of these people to ensure that there is a transfer of knowledge and interests.

Do you think the business, engineering, and science communities communicate enough?

I think they do. They could do more, of course. And I think the right way to do it is to provide the right incentives.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• The full ECHORD interview series
• Why fostering high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship matters to the economy, and what universities can do about it
• Live at TED Global 2013: Tweets, photos and video for quadrotor fans
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “Do robots kill jobs?”
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “How will robots shape the future of warfare?”
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “What funding scheme is the most conducive to creating a robotics industry?”
• Robots Podcast: Warehouse robots

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Established experts in the field of robotics were recently interviewed by a group of scientists from the ECHORD project at Technische Universität München. Motivated by the fact that industry-academia collaborations in robotics are still limited, they wanted to know what makes such collaborations a success, what can be done to avoid common obstacles and what the differences are between collaborations in the US, Europe and Asia. In this 3^rd interview of our four-part series, Sascha Griffiths from TUM talked to Minoru Asada, well-known professor at Osaka University, at the occasion of IEEE ICDL-EpiRob conference in San Diego, California.

[Sascha Griffiths]
Do you collaborate with industrial partners?

[Minoru Asada]
So far I do not have a direct connection to the industry with my own research. But our department’s curriculum includes projects with two companies.

One is the Daiwa House company. The research topic is the design of an intelligent room. The goal is to control, for example, the air conditioning and the lighting, or to sense the humidity. In order to do that we added face recognition features, recognition of facial expressions, gesture recognition, voice recognition, and so on. So, it is kind of a mixture of that and ambient intelligence.

The second company is Citizen, a clock company. The project was to develop new applications for a watch-like device. We started to design a watch-sized device that measures, for example, the temperature, [the wearer’s] pace, or health related data. We also wanted to include some kind of interaction between the user and this device, for example the ability to understand voice commands. These functions could be included in devices like mobile phones.

Of course, in order to realize the product – especially in the case of the Daiwa House company – we need to do some joint research with them. I myself am the PI, and Hiroshi Ishiguro and another professor are involved as well, and contributed to the project. The other professor does the lighting control by gesture, face, or voice recognition. Maybe, in a couple of years, we will try to realize that as a real project. Not as an entire house, but for certain settings, or for some kind of daily life application. I am not sure when we can realize the product we developed in the project with, maybe in a few years …

In your opinion, how could we minimize time it takes for a product from the development in the lab to being ready for sale?

My idea is that I have my own research agenda: this is fundamental research  – and by that I mean development, cognition, and so on. This might seem to be far away from real applications, but I actually do not think that is true. Suppose that the main goal is to reveal the mystery of human development and cognitive functions, for example how a baby can remember something. This involves a lot of steps with lots of different processes. And to do this research we have to design some kind of material, or certain equipment, or a robot. And suppose that this technology can lead to other applications. For example, very soft skin with sensors can also be applied to non-humanoid robots … to furniture or walls, in homes for seniors, to avoid them getting hurt.

There are lots of gaps between even the best ideas and their actual implementation, and closing them is still very far away. In order to fill those gaps, we need a strong team. In our case, for the Daiwa house project for example, we have a collaboration between researchers and industry teams. We have three professors involved, the researchers at Daiwa and some students, altogether more than ten people. These people put a lot of effort into realizing this idea as an actual product.

Is the robotics industry in Japan bigger than in Europe?

We Japanese robot researchers are very proud of our advanced technology. However we are lacking the integration with the real products. The Fukushima power plant was a typical example of this. Many Japanese people expected Japanese robots to be there and to help with rescue operations. But that did not happen. Instead US robots [iRobot’s Packbot and Warrior] were deployed there for the operation. A lot of Japanese people are very disappointed about this, and they are very passionate about this issue.

Another issue is that we have very advanced technology but we are lacking a real – let’s say – verification. For example, 10 or 20 years ago we had a joint research project in Japan: the government spent a lot of money, and companies and researchers designed a [rescue] robot. The ministry then decided that [a rescue-need] situation would not happen and that the robot should focus on inspection only. So, they designed such a rescue robot – but only once. After that they put it in storage and no one used it.

So, we have advanced technology in Japan but we are not good at integrating it in real situations. My idea is to have a site for realistic robot experiments, like a completely new town. There was supposed to be a new town in Osaka. However, last year there were elections for the mayor in Osaka and this new mayor did not support us. There was also the earthquake, and Japanese industry suffered huge losses. For example, Panasonic used to have a research group for robotic applications in a hospital, but they reduced the funding due to a lack of money. These two issues, the earthquake and the new mayor, made me give up on such a site for robot experiments.

In Europe, Paulo Dario proposed RCC – a robot companion for citizens. He was inspired by Japanese robotics but he started to set up these big robot projects that not only involve industry but also research and education. If he receives funding for the RCC, that is going to be a big movement.[note: the RCC project was not funded by the European Commission]

In Japan we have advanced technology but there is no good connection between researchers, the government and industry. Ideally, these three should form a triangle; they should cooperate with each other. But now the government in Japan is just focused on the disaster situation. The industry on the other hand is weakened. Therefore, researchers are losing their connection to the government and industry. Of course the situation you see depends on which industry you take into account: The robot industry in Japan is going through a very hard time right now. It is supposed to only focus on the disaster situation and lacks fundamental research. For fundamental research we need a long term perspective.

In the wake of the earthquake a lot of companies cut their budget for R&D activities. Would you say that this would be a good time for Japanese universities and industry to move closer together?

Right now Japanese companies cannot afford this, as they are focused on the profit. They have suffered from the deficit and are continuously cutting their expenses. Therefore, it is actually not a good time for industry and university connections. I would propose that we focus on topics that will make companies realize that there is some immediate profit to be made. If a research group has a good idea for a device or material that is immediately applicable to the industry, then it might work. But except for such special cases, it is very difficult right now.

If someone has a good idea that should make it into industry, how should researchers communicate such results?

One issue is that Japan is an aging society. In a couple of years one third of the population will be over 65. So, robot applications for the aging society are a social demand – not only for physical but also for mental assistance. There is a lot of potential there. This gives government, the industry and universities an opportunity to collaborate. Safety has top priority here: Physical contact with senior people needs to be improved, and we need time to do research and real-world experiments.

Another issue is entertainment. The origin of the robot is a clockwork-doll. Robots can also be appliances such as door stoppers – any kind of everyday device. The shape is similar to us but it does something strange – and that is kind of fun. In this case you do not need physical interaction – it is not always necessary.

These applications – both for senior citizens and entertainment – are both far away, but they can share some technology. Therefore, a scientist dealing with fundamental research issues can apply their results to different areas. Industry on the other hand needs immediate profit, so they focus on certain topics.

The industry measures success in profit, and researchers’ measure theirs in publications and citations. When these two worlds meet, how would you measure the success of such industry-academia collaboration?

That is a big issue. Even if there is a lot of media coverage, this does not guarantee the success of a product. A typical example for this would be a car. If an automobile company shows a design for a future car and many people like it, the company will introduce it to the market only to realize later that it is “good” but not bought. It’s just to look at.

Therefore, I would propose that we start a good collaboration with some immediate application to the real world and then gradually introduce it to the market. By collaboration, I mean university and industry again. In my opinion the government’s role is to lead this kind of collaboration.

How can increase industry-academia collaboration be increased, and the current problems be overcome?

I mentioned a triangle – the industry, the government and the university or academia. There are still large gaps between these. Therefore, we need someone to connect these, a kind of gatekeeper or producer. Not a researcher but someone with a sense of the market. They should know the demand and need and then determine what kind of product has a big potential.

In Japan we lack the general scientist to promote research. In the US there are general scientists who also are science journalists. These people are necessary. But in Japan science journalists can’t afford a life. I suppose that we need these kind of people to bridge the gap between industry and university. We need people who are not researchers and not in the industry but have a sense of both.

The second interview of this four-part series about collaboration between academia and industry was conducted at the CITEC Summer School 2012 at the Center of Excellence “Cognitive Interaction Technology”, Bielefeld University in Germany. Sascha Griffiths, member of the ECHORD team at TUM interviewed Hiroshi Ishiguro, who is famous for his humanoids with lifelike appearance. Prof. Ishiguro is ATR fellow and director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University.

[Sascha Griffiths]
If you are involved in collaborations between academia and industry, in which areas do you prefer to cooperate?

[Hiroshi Ishiguro]
I have been cooperating with industry for a long time. In 2000 I started a venture company using my patents, where a small human-like robot is being developed. In collaboration with my venture companies, our team was a RoboCup champion four times. There we have lots of good engineers who build pretty good robots. In fact, we were so strong that the people started hating us, so eventually we did not attend anymore.

I am always working with big enterprises that build big systems, for example Toshiba, NTT, Fujitsu or Hitachi. For my venture company the market is smaller. We can develop a very simple, toy-like robot, and we don’t need to have a big market. But on the other hand – in order to change this world – we need to work with big enterprises, and we need to develop more of a general, powerful robot, like for example Honda’s Asimo.

In Japan, almost nobody studies human-robot-interaction. But I have studied it, and therefore all the enterprises are coming to ask my opinion, and we are always running small collaborations. The rest happens at the university. ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories) is very big with the government-supported projects, and its members are big enterprises.

I am involved in university operations and in ATR operations. The university is kind of an incubator. At universities, it is easy to work with venture companies. Once we have good ideas, we can start something new, and then we negotiate with the government about running a much bigger project at ATR. And ATR is no university – it is a private research organization. Therefore it is easier to collaborate with other private organizations, like big enterprises. The companies do not trust universities very much, because a university cannot take any responsibility. It is kind of a collection of amateur people, with so many students. Work at ATR, on the other hand, is different: Everybody is a professional, and we can make any contract.

How would you measure a successful collaboration between a university and industry?

For the companies involved, the most important goal is to have a real product. To have a big success it usually takes a long time. Of course it would be better to submit more patents or journal papers, and to share the know-how; however, the most important thing is internal evaluation, because this is not the paper writing game we play at the university. Cooperation with big enterprises is a very serious game. We do not need to have any external evaluation because we are spending our own money. Universities use government funds, and therefore they need to have external evaluations. That is the difference!

What are the main obstacles in academia/industry collaborations?

It depends on what you want to do. We cannot have pure collaborations. If we want to do real business we should leave the university. If I cannot do it at the university, I just do it at ATR – a private research institute. So my recommendation is to just have two types of cooperation. Obviously, a university is not the ideal place for doing practical work. A specialized institute that is independent of universities is a better platform for exchanging knowledge between industry and academia.

In Asia, is there a very active collaboration between industry and academia?

The situation in Japan is quite strange. We have many good, big enterprises in Japan, but they do not spend a lot of money on Japanese universities. However, they are spending a lot of money on US universities. Their excuse is that they are [already supporting universities by] paying a lot of taxes in Japan. I work at a national university – [and Japanese companies think] that means I am using their tax money. But I do not think that is true! In the US, the situation is probably more natural. Universities are supported by many companies. So, collaboration activities between industry and academia are better in North America than in Asia.

Do you know how the collaboration works in Europe?

I am not sure, but I guess you are doing very well, right? Your universities keep growing and you have a lot of good collaborations with industry, I think. Your universities are very traditional, and you are always working with industry. But in Japan the situation is different. Many people think universities should be independent from industry. In Japan, universities are kind of in a different world that is independent from economics. The fundamental idea is that studying something should be different from earning money. In Japan, the school traditionally was in a temple, and a temple was independent from business matters. A lot of people still think that a university professor cannot have a private company.

In your opinion, how could you improve knowledge transfer and collaboration between academia and industry?

The most important thing is to have the right people. I started my venture company with three people: myself, the president, and a student. The role of my student was technology transfer. He was the best student at Osaka University. I recommended he should get a PhD, but he said he could get a PhD anytime. For a venture company, the timing is quite important, so he said he was going to do something for the venture company. We need to have that kind of person.

How do you measure the success of a robotics research project?

If you can sell a lot of robots, that means a big success. The sales, the real numbers are important. In science, if you can write a pretty good scientific paper, that is also a good success. All we need are two simple evaluations: one for science and one for business. We don’t need to have any other evaluation. Most other kinds of evaluation are artificial. If you find very important things, you will have a good reputation in science, and you can get the Nobel Prize. And if you develop a very useful robot, then someone will sell it.

Thank you very much for your time!

This is the first in a four-part interview series about collaboration between academia and industry, conducted by a group of scientists from the ECHORD project at Technische Universität München. Well-known and established experts in the field of robotics were asked: How can one connect industry and academia effectively? What obstacles are there and what makes collaborations effective? 

The first expert is Rodney Brooks, who was interviewed by myself in Eskilstuna during the Robotics Innovation Challenge 2012. Brooks is professor emeritus at MIT and a successful robotics entrepreneur who just recently launched Rethink Robotics’ Baxter.

[Florian Röhrbein]
What are future research fields in robotics that should be worked in collaborative effort by both academia and industry? Are there specific fields where you think they are especially suited for this sort of collaboration?

[Rodney Brooks]
In general I think there can be collaborations across all fields as long as the expectations are right on both sides. Academia should only be involved if you are not too close to the product. In terms of technical readiness level it would be a 6 or even less. By the time it gets to 6 I think academics have lost interest.

Also the different reward systems of universities and companies seem to be a problem.

Yes, but you can also view this as a strength! With different reward systems innovations are different in the two places and you get the best from both. You cannot view either as a subset of the other.

Are there platforms or tools developed by companies that should be used more in academic robotics research?

It is interesting that ROS, the robot operating system, is now pervasive. One of the systems out of my lab, YARP, started to get used by the RobotCub people. But now ROS has taken over. In ROS you get a lot of tools that then become accessible and can easily be moved around – for example kinematic or dynamic tools. I think it is not so much ROS itself that has become important, but rather that there is now a place people can use as a repository, so that those tools start to become more universal. I think it is like how Open GL made graphics much easier … The same sort of thing is happening with robots.

Looking at this topic the other way round: are there emerging topics that you feel researchers should focus more on in order to ease future collaborations with industry partners?

I think that in industrial robots, and manufacturing in general, we have not really seen the impact of information technology in the same way we have seen it in the office and information spaces. It has been very slow to be adopted. When information technology or computation is brought into manufacturing, it is brought in like it was with mainframes. Imagine, if you had to program in COBOL in order to use this device – it would be useless! But I think that is the level where we are with trying to bring new technologies to manufacturing: right now it is all about how to achieve them and not about making them simple to use. It is the simplicity of use that leads to a high rate of adoption, and I think we have not seen that penetration yet. And this involves both industry and academia. These things have to be people-centric. Adapt them to people, not the other way around. This is where the big payoff is going to be.

Which routes of knowledge transfer do you consider most efficient?

I think the only way it can happen is by exchange of personnel, by people moving back and forth. I ran the Computer Science and AI lab at MIT with 839 people involved. We had a lot of collaborations with large and small companies, but it was only satisfying and successful when people really knew people in the other organization and moved back and forth. Academics were spending time at the companies and vice versa … several months, sometimes a year at a time. The companies and the academics have to be willing to make that investment. But no one wants to make that big an investment if there is no payoff!

What else would you consider a best practice for facilitating this cooperation between industry and academia?

In my experience, the most successful cooperations were those where we set up a joint lab. We did that with Nokia, Quanta Computer from Taiwan and with NTT from Japan. In each case, people from the company and from the university are equals, on all aspects. It is not “We’re the people with the money, we pay you”, or “We’re the people with the ideas”.

What do you think are the main obstacles in collaborative projects between academia and industry and what would be the means to overcome them?

Here’s a generic problem that I’ve see happen many times: The CEO of the company says “I want to bring innovation into my company by working with academia”, goes and signs a deal with some academic group, and then the CEO hands it down two levels in the company. And now it’s someone’s assignment: “Oh, I’m supposed to get innovation from …”

[interrupts] And then it doesn’t work anymore.

It doesn’t work at all. You’ve got to have someone who really understands what is wanted and is part of their mission and not get it handed off to people … they have to cultivate some group that is really going to do it. Within the company, the CEO says “Yes we’re gonna do this.”

Is this somehow collated with the size of the company? It might be easier for small companies because there are not as many levels involved.

Even in a small 50-person company I have seen it not quite working. Surprisingly, one very large company where I have seen it work very well recently is John Deere. The former CEO, Bob Lane, and the current CEO, Sam Allen, keep pushing it, and keep showing up at the places. And everyone in the company sees that this is important, that they really mean it. The CEO has to mean it by participating at some level. So they are running along to demonstrate they are on board.

Regarding upcoming research trends and robotic applications, do you think there are differences between North America, Europe and Asia?

The most important thing is cross-disciplinarity. I think Japan has a large failure on that, because robotics tends to be in mechanical engineering departments. These departments are so strong in academia that they do not have computer scientists or electrical engineers working on robotics, but only mechanical engineers. In my experience, places where the boundaries between the departments are much more flexible do better – for example with a lab structure across multiple departments. The differences are not necessarily by country, but also by institution. Some are too department-driven and others, like MIT, have a strong lab culture. It really depends on the individual institutions.

Thank you very much for your time.