One of the highlights on my calendar is running the “Turning Science into Business Workshop” for your PhD participants. Now in its 4th year, we all went online and with fast moving content, lots of lively group exercises and a real life case study to work on, I’m pleased to say that maintained our high level of participant satisfaction! 

Here’s a snippet from the feedback: 

“…Short, simple, practical, useful and fun…Excellent opportunity to learn about business models…Very useful in explaining the marketing and customer side of things, which scientist often lack…Well structured, well delivered, good overview with a positive delivery…Teaches a structure to test whether business ideas are worth pursuing…”

The reason I particularly like working with your gang is that the science brain embraces the method of developing a hypothesis, identifying the biggest risks and then running a test to discover missing evidence. And it’s just this approach that I use to help all sorts of people from all walks of life to move their ideas forward. 

This year I launched my new book, The Really Good Idea Test published by Pearson. As I write, I’ve just found out that today it has made it into WHSmiths as their 6th best-selling business book; so it really is a recommended read for anyone who wants to work through a new idea and find out if it has legs. 

To celebrate the launch, I would like to offer up a free hour of my time to anyone who buys the book in 2020. Perhaps you want to talk through how to commercialise your research? Or perhaps something more general – a career in business, product or innovation? 

You can find the book here on Amazon, you can find me at productdoctor.co.uk and email me direct: julia@productdoctor.co.uk

Article written by Julia Shalet, Product Doctor

SEPnet postgraduate researchers were given the opportunity to learn how to commercialise their research and get a better understanding of innovation in practice at the Turning Science into Business online workshop 1-2 December 2020. 

The workshop was run by Julia Shalet, Product Doctor, experienced innovator and author. Julia has run very highly rated workshops for SEPnet and has also worked with thousands of innovators across a very broad range of sectors and environments. Julia’s latest book is “The Really Good Idea Test“.

Working in teams, with a real-life case study from , Mason Rowbottom, Chief Executive at Addisol Ltd, delegates created a meaningful value proposition offering solutions to Mason in an interactive session.  They discovered how to reduce their biggest risks before building anything. 

Delegates thought the workshop was an “excellent opportunity to learn about business models and broaden your possibilities on industry” and “very useful in explaining the marketing and customer side of things, which scientist often lack”.

Thank you to Julia and Mason for your contribution to a great workshop.

Academics, EDI champions and PGRs joined SEPnet’s recent annual diversity workshop, hosted by University of Kent, to discuss issues including the effect of online/remote learning on widening participating students; links between attainment differentials and student engagement; early career researcher mental health.

Amy Low and Adam Tweed of AbilityNet described how online learning has offered benefits for many disadvantaged students but has highlighted challenges for others. Researchers Diego Bunge and Dan Hartley showed evidence of how early engagement and attendance are key to improving outcomes for BME students and Zoe Ayres stressed the importance of the need for institutions to take more responsibility for improving the culture in academia to support PGRs’ mental health.

Request to join the discussion at (3) SEPnet Equality & Diversity Champions Network | Groups | LinkedIn

62 students showcased their summer placement projects through online presentations and posters to employers, academic tutors and peers at SEPnet’s 12th Expo and the first online.

Students described a range of varied and exciting projects with large and small employers across different industries and research areas including data science, engineering, energy, IT, satellite communication, defence and scientific research.

The event was chaired by Professor Sir William Wakeham and the keynote address was delivered by Dr Bajram Zeqiri, NPL Fellow in Ultrasound at National Physical Laboratory.

The IOP generously provided prizes for the 6 best posters. The winners included:
Katarzyna Nowak of University of Hertfordshire for ‘A bump in the outskirts of the Milky Way’s most massive satellite’ at University of Surrey;

Reiss Pickett, Open University & Megan Stevens, University of Southampton for ‘Classifying Conversations Using Voice To Text Technology’ at Trackback;

Sofia Kalamantianou, Queen Mary University and Dragos Buculei & Billy Vale, University of Surrey for ‘Live Satellite Tracking and Orbit Pass Prediction’ at Lumi Space;

Abigail Hemming, Royal Holloway University for ‘Control and Automation of a Compact Fusion Reactor’ at Crossfield Fusion Ltd;

Tomoyuki Jinno, Royal Holloway University for ‘Named Entity Recognition for Resumes’ at MeVitae and

Sai Pandian, University of Southampton for ‘Machine Learning for Long Term Event Classification’ at AP Sensing.

You can view the gallery of posters here: https://sway.office.com/tvy2DpRlk7DMyeMc

For more information about next year’s summer placement scheme email summerplacements@sepnet.ac.uk

IOP Publishing is one of the world’s foremost publishers within the physical sciences, with over 80 titles covering all aspects of physics. For early career scientists starting out in research, the world of academic publishing can be somewhat confusing. In this webinar we aim to shed some light on this process and enable you to navigate it to maximise the impact and visibility your research. This talk will cover topics such as open access, choosing the correct journal for your work, the peer-review process, and promoting your research. More information can be found on the IOP Publishing Support site at https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/.

Register here by 24 November.

The annual Students’ Expo provides an opportunity for summer placement students to showcase their work through presentations and posters to over 120 employers, academic tutors and peers. This will be the 12th Expo and the first online.

This year 62 undergraduate placements took place (compared with 74 last year). This is a tremendous achievement given the unprecedented situation. We are very grateful to all the organisations and supervisors for their flexibility and support and congratulate the students for their resilience and ability to cope with such uncertainty and adapt so quickly to a different way of working. They have demonstrated exactly the sort of skills and attitudes that employers value!  

As always students have had a range of interesting placements, many of them home-based, with a variety of large and small employers across different industries and research areas including data science, engineering, energy, IT, satellite communication, defence and scientific research.

The half-day webinar will include presentations from students about their projects and an online poster gallery where attendees can view students’ posters before, during and after the event. You can view the gallery here: https://sway.office.com/tvy2DpRlk7DMyeMc

The event is chaired by Professor Sir William Wakeham and we are delighted that this year’s keynote address will be delivered by Dr Bajram Zeqiri, NPL Fellow in Ultrasound at National Physical Laboratory.

For more information email summerplacements@sepnet.ac.uk

The GRADnet Induction day online event took place on Wednesday, 21 October 2020 with a welcome from Cristobel Soares, SEPnet Graduate Network Manager University of Surrey.

Over 120 new starters signed up for the following workshops:

• Introduction to basic Python and Scientific Python:  Dr Tim Kinnear, University of Kent
• Science communication skills:  Dr Heather Campbell, University of Surrey, Dr Claudia Antolini, Royal Holloway University of London, Hannah Tonry, University of Kent
• Software skills needed for research:  Claire Hepwood, Royal Holloway, University of London

Included in the programme was a presentation from Jack Foster, postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton, on his recent SEPnet PGR placement with Crossfield Fusion Limited.  Jack worked remotely due to COVID-19 with this new start-up company specializing in compact fusion reactors.  He outlined the benefits of completing a placement: expanding his knowledge of nuclear fusion and fusion technology; learning new software and about Particle-In-Cell (PIC) computational physics in general; having practical, hands-on experience with building a physical machine; familiarization with professional work practices and getting a job at the end of the placement! 

Well done Jack and thank you for encouraging our current cohort to consider taking up a SEPnet placement at some point in their PhD.  See here for further information on our SEPnet Placement Scheme.

Thank you to all our presenters for supporting this GRADnet event and adapting their normal face-to-face talks with hands-on interactive group work to online delivery.  

Delegate feedback is encouraging for future online delivery but GRADnet hopes to host this event next year in London where networking will be included.  Fingers crossed!

“The best virtual seminar I’ve attended so far – well organised and informative. Thank you!”

“Clear overview of the main principles behind coding. Very clear tips and advice of what we can do to improve our code. The Teams app has been very useful and very well organized, thanks.”

“Helpful in learning the importance of communication and getting your point across in front of people with different disciplines and diverse groups.”