NTNU educates about 85 per cent of all Norwegian graduate engineers, the university is responsible for making knowledge available throughout Norwegian society. NTNU´s researchers cooporate with industry; regionally, nationally and internationally.
NTNU has approx. 570 research projects in cooperation with industry, the public sector and various funds.
A good deal of attention is paid to establishing and developing cooperation between the academics and regional companies. The technology is already there. The challenge is making good and effective cooperation agreements, but also to make the se companies robust and competitive on both domestic and international markets.
There are formal agreements between NTNU’s faculties, business and industry to stimulate cooperation. Many of NTNU’s adjunct professors have a background from industry or still work in industry.
NTNU Alumni (network for former students) has 2000 members and about 20 newly established alumni groups at faculty level. The members work in industry, business and the public sector all over the world.
Bridge between knowledge and industry
Access Mid Norway is the inward investment agency of the Trøndelag region – established to promote successful industries and technologies to corporate investors internationally and to assist companies in establishing commercial or research activity in Trøndelag.
Access Mid Norway will secure new investment from overseas businesses in international knowledge and technology sectors. Such as information communication technologies, medical technologies, aquaculture and fisheries, and oil, gas and energy.
The Trøndelag region’s competitive advantages are key technologies, successful industrial clusters and business sectors that have targeted markets and international investment environments.
Access Mid Norway was established in March 2006 as an association representing the regional authorities, the municipalities, commercial banks, NTNU and the industrial development agency.
Snøhvit - a true adventure
New technology from NTNU has allowed Statoil to achieve what few people had thought possible - the first offshore development in the Barents Sea. Without surface installations, this Snøhvit project involves bringing huge volumes of natural gas to land for liquefaction and export from the first plant of its kind in Europe. This is the world’s northernmost liquefied natural gas facility. Arctic LNG supplies from Snøhvit will provide new opportunities for Statoil in the US natural gas market.
FAST was founded by NTNU-graduates
The Internet company Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST), which was founded by graduates from NTNU, is one of the fastest growing IT-companies in the world. The key to its success is an efficient software system and a specially designed micro-processor for searching large databases. Concurrently with their work on file search and text search, the research teams at NTNU developed methods for compressing pictures and video. The competitive advantage of this approach is it reduces the quantity of data without reducing the image quality. Today Fast is especially focused on business-search. And the company is still cooperating with NTNU.
To have access to the same knowledge as FAST, their biggest competitors, Google and Yahoo have established their own research groups in Trondheim. They also cooperate closely with NTNU.
