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In conversation with Dr Amanda Rasmussen: growing ideas through partnership

Step into Dr Amanda Rasmussen’s office and the first thing you notice is the plants. Monstera and orchids are visibly sending out roots around the room, a living reminder of the questions that drive her research.

Mandy is Associate Professor of Plant Ecophysiology in the School of Biosciences. Although her field is specialist, the application of root physiology is easy to picture. If we can get more plants and trees to grow successfully, we can support forestry, horticulture, biodiversity and more sustainable production.

Mandy’s research focuses on propagation: how plants are reproduced, how cuttings form roots, and how hormone networks influence growth. These questions matter in sectors such as forestry and ornamental plant production, where some species can be difficult to grow reliably. Her projects include work funded by the Forestry Commission on UK native trees that are challenging to propagate, including oak, and a collaboration with Pinnacle Plants International focused on ornamental woody trees.

In conversation, what comes through most strongly is that Mandy is motivated by impact. She talks about it as something practical: a plant that roots, a grower who can use the science, and a partnership that carries on after the funding ends. One route for doing that has been a Knowledge Transfer Partnership, or KTP. These Innovate UK part-funded partnerships bring together academic experts and innovative businesses to turn knowledge into practical innovation.

The KTP was where Mandy’s science met a grower’s practical problem of how to make difficult-to-propagate ornamental woody plants root more reliably. The story starts with deep academic expertise, moves into a conversation with a business about a real production challenge, and then becomes a funded project with people working across both worlds. In this case, the collaboration worked so well that the company kept the KTP Associate on after the project, showing that the work created value beyond the life of the funding. 

Internal conversations: finding support early

Mandy is an advocate for networking as a core part of academic life, especially when ideas are still taking shape. When considering the possibility of funding streams such as a KTP, early and practical support can make a difference. The university's KTP team can provide helpful challenge, asking whether there is a partner need, what evidence is missing, whether more preliminary data is needed, and how to explain the idea in a way that makes sense outside the university. Mandy has benefited from this kind of support at Nottingham and at previous institutions. Her view is that it helps researchers learn how to talk about the value of their work, not just the science behind it.

“To me, having strong networks is important. I need to trust the people I work with.”

Amanda Rasmussen, Associate Professor of Plant Ecophysiology 

However, Mandy is also honest about the hard part: strong networks do not build themselves. People are busy. Teaching pressures are real. Even well-designed opportunities can struggle if colleagues cannot see the immediate value. Her experience suggests that internal networking events need a clear purpose, a visible benefit and formats that respect academic time.  However, colleagues should also consider the benefit of building a network for its own sake, not just for solving a pressing need in the short term.

External conversations: understanding what the world needs

Mandy’s second lesson is to look outward. She delights in having taken every external networking opportunity that came along from international peer networks to leadership development programmes. These experiences matter because commercial projects depend on what the industry needs, what funders care about, what problems practitioners are trying to solve, and what language makes sense to people outside a research specialism. Crossing paths with leaders who come from all sorts of professional backgrounds has also been helpful from a development perspective.

In Mandy’s case, those external conversations connect to a broad set of possibilities: better propagation of native trees, ornamental plant production, tissue culture, peat-free growing media, and even the rediscovery of historical propagation techniques using AI tools and archives. The science may be complex, but the commercial question is simple: who needs this, and what would make it useful to them?

What Mandy’s experience tells us

Mandy’s story shows that commercialisation is not just a process. It is a set of conversations. Some are internal, with knowledge transfer colleagues, potential collaborators and people in other disciplines. Others are external, with business, funders, growers, sector networks and professional peers. Some networks return an immediate benefit, some have a slower, long term return on time invested. The value comes from the movement between those conversations, as an idea is tested, reshaped and made more practical.

From research to impact: Nottingham’s innovation ecosystem

What makes Nottingham distinctive is that all the pillars required to build successful spin-outs sit under one roof. Our research excellence, commercialisation expertise, investor engagement, and long-term business support are fully integrated. This connectivity enables innovators to move more seamlessly from discovery to real-world impact, backed by the full strength of the university and its knowledge exchange professionals.