The journey from scientific discovery to industry adoption is rarely straightforward. Nowhere is this more evident than in food science, where breakthrough ideas—new sustainable materials, processing innovations, or safety technologies—often struggle to reach the scale, speed, or visibility needed to make real impact.
Yet across the innovation ecosystem, leaders are building models of collaboration that challenge this status quo. One of the most compelling examples can be found at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where Professor Christopher Wallis, plays a key role within the ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre, a hub that supports food and drink manufacturers with technical, operational, and commercial expertise.
Drawing on experience across academia, industry, and third sector organisations—spanning Cardiff Met, Polymateria, Imperial College London, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew—Wallis brings a uniquely applied translational mindset to the challenge of bridging the academic–industry gap.
Why the Innovation Divide Still Persists
Innovation in food science is inherently multidisciplinary. Chemistry, engineering, data analytics, sustainability, and policy intersect in ways that make collaboration essential but operationally challenging.
From our vantage point at Halo, we consistently hear three recurring barriers from innovation leaders:
- Different timelines. Academic research thrives on depth and rigor; industry requires speed and iteration.
- Different incentives. Publications vs. products; funding cycles vs. market cycles.
- Different languages. Technical detail vs. commercial framing; exploration vs. execution.
These recurring issues create what we often call “the valley,” the gap between discovery and implementation.
Wallis is quick to point out that, alongside structural barriers like infrastructure or funding, individual motivations also play a role. Some academics are deeply committed to translational research, others prefer to focus purely on fundamental topics. Both are equally valid choices, but it does mean that not every great idea will be steered toward application.
A Longstanding Model of Industry Engagement at Cardiff Met
While many universities are only recently building structured platforms for industry engagement, ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre has been doing this work for decades. Based at Cardiff Metropolitan University Llandaff campus, ZERO2FIVE combines food science research with hands-on technical and innovation support for Welsh food and drink businesses—helping them with everything from new product development to food safety certification, process efficiency, and waste reduction.
Wallis describes ZERO2FIVE as a key vehicle which helps him to align his core work at Cardiff Metropolitan University with the type of industry–academic partnerships that HALO supports. The flagship of that vehicle is the HELIX Programme, funding by Welsh Government and delivered by four food Centres in Wales: ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre; Food Centre Wales; Food Technology Centre; and AberInnovation.
The HELIX Programme provides funded food safety certification, new product development and process efficiency support to eligible Welsh food and drink companies. Since its launch in 2016, it has delivered hundreds of millions of pounds of economic impact to the Welsh food and drink sector and has recently surpassed a £600m+ impact milestone for the industry as a whole (Zero2Five).
“The economic impact of HELIX on the sector’s economy has been outstanding and a real beacon of inspiration for translational and applied R&D between academia and industry.” Wallis explains. “You don’t see this level of return very often, and it comes from the project being delivered by people who understand both sides of the equation.”
Crucially, ZERO2FIVE and the HELIX Programme were set up from the start to sit at the interface of academia and industry. That means working to the expectations and timelines of businesses, while preserving scientific rigor and quality.
“When an industry partner comes to you and says, ‘We’d like you to do this project in two weeks,’ at the end of those two weeks they expect an answer,” Wallis says. “Having people who’ve worked in business means we understand that delivery mindset.”
People Who Speak Both Languages
One of the reasons ZERO2FIVE has been so effective is the kind of people it employs. Many of its staff have built careers in industry and then moved into academia, bringing a lived understanding of commercial pressures, customer expectations, and delivery standards into the university environment. (Cardiff Metropolitan University)
“They’ve worked in industry and now they work in academia,” Wallis says. “They understand that each system is different but can work together.”
This dual fluency helps address one of the most persistent misconceptions on the industry side.
“I think the misconception is often that academics have no industrial experience or no interest in seeing their technological development scale,” he says. “That’s simply not true anymore.”
Wallis sees a growing cohort of what he calls “non-traditional pathway academics”—people who don’t follow the classic lecturer–associate professor–full professor route, but instead return to academia after careers in government, business, or industry.
These academics often arrive already fluent in commercial realities and are motivated to build research programmes that have both scientific and market impact. For industry partners, learning to recognise and seek out this group can make collaboration feel less risky and more productive from the start.
Lessons from a Translational Career
Wallis’s own journey is a case in point. After completing a PhD in chemistry, he spent years working in applied research roles—including in France, where he worked on converting fatty wastewater from abattoirs into biofuels, and at Polymateria, where he helped shape R&D strategy around biodegradable technologies for commodity plastics.
Those experiences reinforced a few principles that now underpin his work at ZERO2FIVE and through the HELIX Programme:
- Co-design over outsourcing. The most effective projects start with a shared question, not a predefined answer.
- Translation champions matter. Individuals who can speak both scientific and commercial languages keep collaborations moving forward.
- Delivery builds trust. Meeting agreed timelines and outcomes is just as important as the novelty of the science.
- Iterative structures work best. Agile, open-ended collaborations generally outperform rigid, one-off engagements.
- Simple can be the solution. Providing innovation through the applied use of knowledge to the specific issue within industry context.
A Changing Academic Culture
Beyond institutional models, Wallis believes there’s a cultural shift happening inside universities themselves.
“More and more academics are just as excited to see their work turn into a product on a shelf as they are to see it in a top journal,” he says.
This doesn’t mean publication has become less important. Rather, it reflects a growing desire among researchers to see their work make a tangible difference—in a factory, on a supermarket shelf, in a hospital, or in a supply chain.
For some, impact now includes:
- A new product that exists because of their data or discovery.
- A manufacturing process that is safer, cleaner, or more efficient.
- A small business or spin-out that can compete and grow because of applied technical support.
That shift in mindset—combined with Centres like ZERO2FIVE and programmes like the HELIX Programme—creates fertile ground for more ambitious, more effective collaboration models.
Scaling the Approach Across the Innovation Ecosystem
Although ZERO2FIVE focuses on food and drink, the fundamentals of its model apply across many sectors—packaging, agriculture, water systems, and beyond. (Cardiff Metropolitan University)
For corporate R&D and innovation leaders, the Cardiff Metropolitan University example highlights a shift already underway across external innovation:
- Universities are evolving from research providers to co-creation partners.
- Companies are engaging earlier, looking for scientific input at the problem-definition stage, not just near commercialization.
- Translation is becoming shared work, not the responsibility of one side trying to “pull” the other along.
Looking Ahead
Bridging the innovation divide will require more than partnership agreements; it will require new structures, new incentives, and new mindsets on both sides.
Cardiff Met’s ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre and the HELIX Programme offer one blueprint for what this future can look like: a science-driven, collaboration-first environment where innovation moves not in isolation but through continuous translation between labs, factories, and markets.
For organizations navigating the intersection of sustainability, food systems, and scientific discovery, models like this will be essential to accelerating breakthroughs that are both technically sound and societally meaningful.
And for a growing number of “non-traditional pathway academics,” there may be nothing more rewarding than being able to say, as Wallis puts it, “You see that product there? I helped make that happen.”
