Describe your R&D problem and find who's already working on it

Faculty at five R1 universities, in our founder's 2024 research, described a good industry collaboration in their own terms: it funds the lab, it still produces publications, it has impact outside the journal, and the partner hires their students.

• The companies that need your expertise don't know your lab exists.

  Claim your profile and import your publications and patents, then add your facilities and what types of collaboration you're open to, and see which companies' patents cite your papers.

• Federal grants are harder to win, and your students still need funding.

  See which companies' patents build on work like yours, and get the open federal funding calls that best match your research profile too.

• Every industry contact you have came through someone you already knew.

  Paste an abstract, problem statement, or topic query to find the researchers at universities, labs, and companies whose work fits it best, well beyond your own network.

Agreements stay between you, your partner, and your institution, and are signed through your usual process. Helikon isn't a party to them.

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Many of the ideas your market will adopt start outside your company. A university lab can test an idea, bring methods and equipment your team doesn't have, and train the people you'll want to hire, before you commit a full program budget.

• Your team can't be expert in everything, and hiring takes months.

  Describe the technical problem and get the researchers who've already published and patented on it, each with a match score and the record it matched on, so you can check it. Each result shows where they work, so you can reach them the way you do today, or message members in the app.

• New technologies move faster than you can track them.

  Map any technology area: who publishes, who patents, who's funded, and which patents build on which papers.

• You decide which projects to fund with too little evidence.

  Check a partner's record before you commit budget, with publications, patents, funding, and citations on one profile. Save the ones you like to lists, with CSV export on Pro and above.

• Your SBIR or STTR proposal needs a university partner, and the deadline is close.

  Paste your specific aims and get the researchers whose work best fits them, with their funding history, then set the proposal up as a project.

• Every partnership lives in one person's inbox and spreadsheet.

  Track each one from first contact to signed agreement on the Partnership Pipeline, on Pro and above, then run the project in a workspace both sides can see.

Agreements and IP terms are set between your company and the university through your usual process. Helikon isn't a party to them.

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Industry funding steadies a research budget that leans on federal grants, and a well-run collaboration is how the next one starts: another project, a license, a hire.

• Leadership wants more industry funding, and you're starting from a contact list.

  Look up any of your faculty and see which companies' patents cite their papers, and who the inventors are. Or start from a technology's patent class and see which companies are patenting there. Save them to lists, with CSV export for your CRM on Pro and above.

• A company asks who on campus works on their problem, and you're emailing deans.

  Search the record by topic, filter it to your institution, and answer with the faculty who've published or patented on it, not whoever a dean remembers.

• Nobody can say how many partnerships are active, or what they produced.

  Each project records its NDA, IRB, and contract status, and your office sees the detail of any project it's added to. A shared pipeline for your office starts on Team, at $19 a seat a month, and Institutional adds an analytics dashboard across departments and a compliance dashboard, set up with us directly.

Agreements are still negotiated and signed through your sponsored programs office. On Free, other members see a project's summary and team, so keep sponsor names and confidential terms out of the summary. Milestones, budgets, messages, and files stay private to project members only, and on Pro and above a project can be invite-only or limited to your organization.

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A lab with industry partners gives you papers and contacts at the same time, and industry experience before you finish is a head start on the job you want next.

• You want industry experience before you finish, and you don't know which companies work on your topic.

  Paste your thesis abstract and get researchers at companies whose work fits, then see which companies' patents cite papers in your area. That works even if nobody at those companies has signed up, because patents and papers are public record.

• You're choosing your next lab on reputation and guesswork.

  Compare groups by what they've published, patented, and been funded to do, and see who has said they're open to mentoring.

• Nobody outside your lab can see what you work on.

  Get a public research profile built from your publications, on the Free plan, and find company-sponsored capstones and theses in public projects.

Sponsored research runs through your advisor and your university's research office, and Helikon gives you the shortlist to bring them. Your searches and saved lists are private on every plan.

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A technology's record is public if you can line it up: who invented it, what it builds on, and who else is working on the same problem.

• You need to know who is really behind a technology.

  See a patent's inventors, the scientific papers it builds on, and the full research record of the people who wrote them.

• You need to know who else is working on the same problem.

  Open a technology area and see who publishes, who patents, and which companies own the patents.

• Finding an independent expert for diligence takes weeks.

  Describe the technical question and get the researchers whose work fits it best, each with a match score and the record it matched on, on every plan. Save them to tagged lists, with CSV export on Pro and above.

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