Facilitating new connections

KER pilots new matching tool to strengthen community-university collaboration

Both university researchers and nonprofit organizations are typically invested in the health, wellness and stability of the communities where they live and work. Partnerships between them allow for the exchange of critical knowledge, experiential wisdom and cutting edge research that can help them more effectively achieve their goals.

Yet these groups are often unaware of their shared interests and how they might lead to productive collaboration. Finding partners across sectors often depends on existing connections, word of mouth or laborious internet searches that may overlook emerging researchers and smaller organizations.

Nothing quite like this existed. When we first launched KER, the need to systematically connect university and community partners required a novel data system that we had to create for ourselves.

— Patricia Solís, Executive Director, ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

Brajesh Karna, KER’s data manager, Mason Mathews, associate director for academic integration and alliances, and executive director Patricia Solís worked to create a new tool that makes this process easier and more inclusive.

Dubbed the Knowledge Alliance Tool, it uses natural language processing and semantic network analysis to process information from online researcher profiles and organization websites to find interests that the groups have in common.

“The tool can be used to identify opportunities for collaboration on service learning projects, proposals and other projects that bring together researchers and community organizations,” said Karna.

Its search platform allows users to type their name, their organization’s name or a research topic and find potential partners with a similar focus.

The Knowledge Alliance Tool provides an alternative to time consuming and inefficient searches based on word of mouth or internet searches. The tool also enables users to identify emerging scholars and organizations that may be overlooked with existing search strategies.

— Mason Mathews, Associate Director for Academic Integration and Alliances, ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

Mason Mathews, KER's associate director for academic integration and alliances, discusses the Knowledge Alliance Tool with potential users.

Abby Johnson / ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

The Knowledge Alliance Tool currently includes almost 9,000 ASU researchers and nearly 6,000 local organizations .

Ultimately, more efficient and effective partner searches can help universities, organizations and communities create better partnerships to achieve collective goals. Karna, Mathews and Solís aim to eventually expand the tool to include private sector organizations to facilitate partnerships across even more sectors.

In the meantime, the team is piloting the Knowledge Alliance Tool with potential end users to test its usefulness and incorporate their feedback before officially launching it. They are also working with ASU SkySong on patenting and licensing.

To learn more about the tool, reach out to any of our three creators: Brajesh Karna (brajesh.karna@asu.edu), Mason Mathews (mason.mathews@asu.edu) and Patricia Solís (patricia.solis@asu.edu).