15 November 2017 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
A new sector service launched this week, with the release of Konfer, a professional social network developed by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) with the Research Councils (RCUK) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (England). Konfer is described as a “innovation brokerage tool” that NCUB hopes will open up research, researchers and services in UK universities to businesses and other organisations looking for new ideas and collaborations.
At the launch David Sweeney, Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at HEFCE and Executive Chair Designate of Research England, said: “konfer promotes stronger commercialisation, business and policy links and wider societal engagement with publicly funded research. It opens out what universities and research institutes do to a wider audience and I’m delighted to see it reaching full launch stage following development work with universities and businesses of all sizes.”
Konfer gives direct access to 119,000+ academics, 15,000+ facility and equipment listings, 1.5m web pages, and 62,000+ YouTube videos from university channels, along with hundreds of thousands of news articles, events, and more.
It’s not yet clear whether Konfer will at some stage replace Equipment.data, but as soon as we find out we’ll let you know.
