Episode 15 - What is a Knowledge Transfer Partnership? (with Catherine Sinclair)

This podcast explores knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs) through a conversation with Catherine Sinclair, a KTP associate working with SPACE and Northumbria University. Sinclair clarifies that a KTP is a collaboration between a university and an industry partner, designed to solve an industry problem, distinguishing it from a PhD which is purely research-based. Her KTP focuses on reducing carbon at design stages by creating a digital carbon model for SPACE. Sinclair details how she was approached for the KTP due to her master's dissertation and emphasizes the advantage of specializing in a research area while remaining in practice. The discussion also covers the application process, the structure of the KTP, and Sinclair's development of a tool to assess and reduce the impact of early-stage design decisions on a building's whole life carbon.