Why Road2Science?
A reliable, safe and sustainable transport infrastructure is an important prerequisite for Sweden's prosperity and future development. Interest in this area is steadily increasing as our society is facing the important task of finding solutions to achieve sustainable transport infrastructure with a limited public budget.
The pace of development in the transport infrastructure sector has great potential to benefit from the fast technological development in several relevant areas, such as materials, ICT and vehicles. Even increased internationalization and tougher competition can benefit the sector through increased productivity and implementation of more effective solutions. An important prerequisite is, however, that this sector lags somewhat behind the technical development, especially in the implementation of modern solutions and more effective methods. In order to stimulate technological development a closer cooperation between academiy and industry, an easier implementation of research results and the establishment multidisciplinary networks are requiered.
At KTH, there is traditionally a considerable competence in the field of transport infrastructure, especially in road- and railway technology. In view of the above and in order to strengthen and clarify KTH's efforts in the area, in 2012 the Road2Science (R2S) competence center wa established, aimed to create a natural meeting place for industry partners and to encouraget the cooperation between industry actors.
The overall ambition of Road2Science has been to:
- support innovation through collaborative research and interdisciplinary learning;
- enhance knowledge transfer between academy and industry
- contribute to higher education and industry growth by creating close and effective links between education, research and innovation;
- serve as a model of collaboration between academia, government authorities and industry at national and global level.
