Abstract

Researchers´ Night in Madrid 2011 is a project which involves the main Universities and Research Centres in the Region as well as two National Scientific Associations within the framework of the European Researchers´ Night. University of Alcalá submit to European Competition for Best Innovations in University Outreach and Public Engagement the activities specially programmed for this project, which aims at bringing the researchers

The chemistry community of the University of Turin (Italy) has seen an opportunity in the International Year of Chemistry to try an experiment in science communication specifically focused on chemical sciences.
Chemistry fills quite a negative place in the collective imagination as it is often associated with environmental damages, pollution, toxic substances, etc. Common people rarely realize that chemistry plays a role in every aspect of daily life, somehow or other, and that a life without chemistry would not be possible.

The I National Competition of Crystallization in the School (http://www.lec.csic.es/concurso/) is a contest on crystallography and crystallization for young pupils that has been carried out among 20 secondary schools across 7 provinces (Granada, Cadiz and Malaga, Gerona, Oviedo, Murcia and Zaragoza) of 5 different regions (Andalusia, Catalonia, Asturias, Murcia and Aragon) throughout Spain.

For business competitiveness, innovation is one of the most significant factors for the development of new products, processes or services. In this sense, intellectual capital plays an important role in promoting the innovation culture by transferring the knowledge generated at the university into the business sector.

In order to benefit from the opportunities of the knowledge emerging from the university, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of La Laguna together with the two Canary University Foundations launched the Innovation Dynamization Programme as a means to promote knowledge and technology transfer from universities to companies, as well as to build the innovation culture in the Canary Islands. After several editions, the need to bring this initiative to all the islands' society was identified. Thus, an ambitious training project was designed, with a greater degree of specialization, which could reach a greater number of profiles, in the islands’ society. This idea gave birth to the IInnovation Management Training Program, which aims to train specialists on innovation, so as to constitute a fundamental support for knowledge and technology transfer from the universities to business sector.