Campus and Community

“It’s at the interface of knowledge that the spark occurs”

Peter Villax spoke about the need to strengthen the relationship between academia and the business world.

EN He graduated in politics and economics from the University of Aberdeen, worked with semiconductors and was programmer. Currently, among other things, Peter Villax is vice president for Innovation at Hovione, a chemical company founded in Portugal in 1959.

While already working at Hovione, you focused on the area of medical inhalation devices and patents. Why?
I am slightly asthmatic, hence the motivation, and on top of that the firm sells products for asthma. I decided to develop respiratory inhalation products using corticosteroids and thus started my path as an inventor of medical devices. It’s been 20 years since my first patent, it’s even already expired.

And what do you do exactly?
We develop technology in the field of particle engineering in order to modify their size, surface properties, the control of interactions between particles… processes that ensure reproducibility in the manufacturing process. We are talking about particles that have a size between one and four microns: we can have an accuracy of approximately 0.1 microns… that is only possible with brilliant engineers.

And besides that with lots of funding?
Of course financing is needed, but it is not just a matter of money. If we are, currently, the largest private employer of PhDs in Portugal, we owe it to José Mariano Gago. If today we have 35 PhDs here in Portugal, it is thanks to Mariano Gago’s policies, which created an extraordinary amount of technological and scientific talent. Until this new generation of scientists appeared at Hovione, chemical production was boring. This new generation of scientists that came from the brilliant Portuguese universities transformed the production at Hovione into a science, and nowadays we describe ourselves as an industrial company based on science.

And do you only recruit Portuguese individuals?
We preferably recruit Portuguese individuals because they’re better. Our graduates are among the best in the world.

But is it necessary to have closer relationships between universities and companies?
There is a very large cultural gap between a company and a university. A company does not depend
on a government budget.
Universities, in general, are dependent. We have a culture of urgency and immediate results that is incompatible with the academic culture that must exist in a university: the accumulation of knowledge. That is the mission of the university, knowledge. And sometimes, it takes a long time. There are standstill moments in the academic form of thinking and acting that cannot exist in the head of a manager or businessman. There are wages to be paid at the end of the month.

So how can they collaborate?
We must know each other, coexist, get along and collaborate.
Speaking of collaborations: over the years, there have been internships for students from Técnico at Hovione…
Yes. We have, with Professor Herold from Técnico, a decades-long collaboration where we welcome students proposed by Instituto Superior Técnico.

Only in chemistry?
We were one hundred percent organic chemistry for several decades. Now we have changed that and it is much more fun. Our last recruit was a doctorate in aeronautics. We began to have many disciplines because it is at the interface of knowledge and disciplines that a spark occurs, and we have to always be causing intellectual sparks.

And for that picking the best graduates from various schools, such as Técnico?
Técnico is a school that gives a technical preparation which is perhaps the strongest in the country. It is well-known for that. The challenge is to have an understanding of the market and that is where we go back to that cultural gap that I was talking about: an academic finds it difficult to understand the market.

And the opposite?
I also sometimes have trouble understanding the way a university student thinks. It’s normal, I live and breathe the company. That’s why we have to get closer to get a better understanding: we have the problem and they have the key to the problem. We, at Hovione, teach innovation as a discipline, and the first lesson of thatcourse is: start by characterizing the problem.
If there is no problem, there is no possible innovation.

How do you see the future of collaborations with Técnico and other universities?
We have to be closer to the university because that sense of urgency that we have, we have to pass it on to the university. The university has to speed up a little. Universities should not become economic agents except in the education market. Companies are the ones that are the market players. But it is important that we, as businesses, be more sensitive to the problems of the university and that the university is more sensitive to business problems. A political scientist divided research into four areas, according to two vectors; that of knowledge and of applicability of the results. Where should we place ourselves? In the area of fundamental knowledge with applicability to society. !