Some of the earliest Erlang adopters were Universities, using the language semantics to teach aspects of computer science. This resulted in research projects and collaboration focusing on type systems, tooling, static analysis, property-based testing, all overlapping with classic themes such as VM enhancements, concurrency, distribution, scalability, reliability and multi-core. Whilst lots has been achieved, the challenges faced by the software industry keeps on evolving, as does the hardware and infrastructure they run our systems on. In this panel, Torben Hoffmann leads a discussion with Kostis Sagonas, Kevin Hammond, Natalia Chechina, and Simon Thompson on how the industry and universities can work together to keep research thriving, accessible, cutting-edge and relevant.