University-industry collaboration, technology transfer, and joint project applications all share one common preliminary step: you first need to know who is sitting across from you, what they have done, and what direction they are working in now. In practice, this step is often done in the most slapdash way—search a few names before the meeting, save a few links, glance at the bios, and then go to the negotiating table. If the other party mentions a project you have never heard of, you can only nod; if you cannot spot gaps in their résumé, you have no basis for asking about them.
This article breaks down how to make pre-meeting preparation solid: use MuchSci's Talent Profile feature to first organize the publicly verifiable parts into a structured profile, turning "not knowing what the other party is working on" into "a checklist to confirm item by item." One point to make clear up front: the due diligence discussed here touches only public materials. It does not involve non-public information in commercial due diligence such as finance, legal, or litigation matters, nor does it constitute any investment or collaboration advice.
01 Before the conversation, do a four-step public-information review
▲ Figure 1 | From identifying the lead person to generating items to confirm, four steps make pre-meeting preparation solid
The first step is to identify the people. Collaboration is discussed with a specific team, so first determine the core members of the other party's team and their current institutions, rather than vaguely recording the name of an organization. The second step is to trace the résumé timeline: list education history and employers in chronological order and see whether the timeline is continuous. The third step is to map the direction: organize the publicly verifiable research fields and projects they have led, and make a rough judgment about how much overlap there is between their focus and what you plan to discuss.
The fourth step is the most important: generate items to confirm. During the review, you will inevitably encounter places where the materials do not match or are unclear—a certain period of employment has no details, or two names cannot be clearly determined to be the same person. Do not guess about these; list them separately in a checklist and bring it to the meeting to ask about them one by one. The purpose of pre-meeting preparation is not to draw conclusions on the other party's behalf, but to ensure that every question asked in the meeting has a source.
02 What can be checked, and what must be asked in person
▲ Figure 2 | The publicly verifiable parts and the parts that must be communicated in person should be kept separate
What the profile can and cannot answer must be clearly delineated in advance. The left column is publicly verifiable: education history and employers have external sources and can be checked item by item; research fields have public statements and can serve as a starting point for conversation; the names and dates of projects led can be verified. The right column is beyond the profile's scope: specific technical solutions are often not in public materials, willingness to cooperate can only be discussed, and arrangements involving ownership and commercial matters follow separate formal procedures.
If this line is not clearly drawn, due diligence can easily go off track. Some people take the project list in the profile and press the other party for technical parameters. That is not due diligence; it is overstepping—what they publicly said was "what projects they have led," and they are under no obligation to lay out their solution for you at the first meeting. Conversely, leaving questions that the profile should answer until the meeting wastes valuable face-to-face time asking "where is your university located?" Write the two lists separately, and let each do its own job.
03 The profile has three parts, and missing parts are obvious at a glance
▲ Figure 3 | The three-part structure of a due diligence profile, each independent and separately verifiable
The first part answers "Who is the lead person?": current position, research fields, and a one-sentence introduction. The second part answers "Where have they been?": education history and employment history, arranged chronologically. The third part answers "What are they doing?": publicly verifiable research directions and projects led. The three parts are independent of one another; if any part is missing, mark it as blank rather than using other fields to guess.
This is far more practical than a single-paragraph biographical introduction. A paragraph reads smoothly, but there is no way to start "checking a certain period of employment" within it; once split into fields, each item becomes an independent unit for verification. MuchSci's Talent Profile is organized along exactly these lines: four categories of fields—basic information, education, employment history, and main research achievements—with sources noted at the top of the profile. Records that do not match are marked "to be verified" rather than mixed into the formal profile. This mechanism was broken down in Article 01 of this series; here it is used directly as the foundation for a due diligence profile.
04 Feature interface: what the profile looks like
▲ Figure 4 | Comparison of two pre-meeting preparation approaches: the difference lies in whether you can ask the right questions
Putting "do a quick search" and "build a profile first, then talk" side by side makes the difference plain: with the former, if someone else takes over, they have to start over; with the latter, the same profile can be handed off across the whole team. The former assumes whatever is found is correct; the latter lists mismatches separately as items to confirm. The preparation time may not differ much, but the quality of the questions asked in the meeting differs a great deal.
Specifically in terms of the interface, the profile looks like this:
▲ Figure 5 | Talent Profile interface: basic information and education, with sources and coverage scope stated in the header
The profile identifier and data source are marked at the very top, and education is presented in a table, with time, school, major, and result listed item by item. When preparing due diligence, you can directly use this table to check the other party's résumé; information not in the table should go into the list of items to confirm, rather than being filled in from impression.
05 Boundaries
① This article discusses functional mechanisms and application methods and does not constitute any investment or collaboration advice. Whether and how to cooperate must be judged and borne by the user and the relevant institutions themselves.
② The due diligence discussed in this article is limited to public materials. It does not involve non-public information such as finance, legal, or litigation matters, nor any personal privacy data; the profile is an organization of public materials and does not constitute an evaluation or endorsement of anyone's capabilities.
③ Structure does not equal conclusion. Items to be confirmed must be resolved through face-to-face communication and formal procedures. For matters involving technology transfer and project applications, the current regulations and procedures of the relevant institutions shall prevail.