All posts by Cristobel Soares

17Feb/23

Turning Science into Business: A really good idea!

Are you thinking about how to commercialise your research? Perhaps you already have an idea and want to get started? Or maybe you just want to get insights that will help you transition from academia into a business environment…

The hook to get SEPnet PGRs to attend a 2-day workshop on 15-17 February 2023 at the IOP, run by Julia Shalet, author of “The Really Good Idea Test” and an experienced innovator who has brought many new propositions to market.

Over the two days, delegates worked in teams with a real case study, taking a tried and tested step-by-step process to find a viable commercial opportunity. In their teams they were able to practise a set of common business skills that employers are looking for.

Thank you to Julia for sharing toolkits and stories from her experiences working with start-ups through to corporates.

Thank you to the following SEPnet employer contacts for joining us at the networking evening event on day one at the IOP in London: Yash Balaji, Nanofabrication Engineer, Oxford Quantum Circuits; Matt England, Trainee Patent Attorney, WP Thompson; Phil Goddard, Head of Data Science, Kindred Group; Rupert Mellor, Trainee Patent Attorney, WP Thompson; Mitchell Peaks; AMO Physicist, Quantum Engineer, Riverlane; Renuka Pothuraju, Nanofabrication Engineer, Oxford Quantum Circuits; Stuart Revell, RTACS;  Sam Rowley; Higher Data Scientist, BEIS; Durga Sankar, Founder & CEO, Arcus News and Rosh Sellahewa, Senior Manager, Deloitte.  Your insight and advice on working in industry was much appreciated by all attendees.

These workshops are always very highly rated and delegates particularly like how interactive and practical they are.

“Great workshop, really appreciated having the first day in person it made a huge difference to my ability to engage with the resources.”

“Julia was very engaging and personable, really made us feel welcome”

“Excellent workshop, clear, concise and interactive.”

09Dec/22

Call for SEPnet Summer Placements 2023

SEPnet Summer Placements 2023

Do you have a project/work experience for a physics or maths undergraduate or PhD student?

SEPnet (South East Physics Network) is a consortium of university physics departments – Hertfordshire, Kent, Portsmouth, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway, Southampton, Surrey, Sussex and Open University.

The scheme

SEPnet organises over 80 summer placements a year for all 2nd and 3rd year physics and maths undergraduate and PhD students at the above universities and is seeking 8-week plus projects in industry or research in areas such as data analysis, mathematical modelling, programming, product design and testing or science communication.

Who can apply?

The scheme is aimed at any organisations interested in recruiting physics or maths graduates, or who can offer valuable business experience, including large companies, SMEs, start-ups, research institutions, charities and NGOs.

Benefits to employers

  • Early access to bright, numerate students with excellent problem-solving and IT skills
  • Enables you to carry out projects you would not normally have time for
  • Provides a fresh perspective on your business challenges
  • All advertising, administration and placement support is handled by the SEPnet team
  • Match-funding available for SMEs!

What employers have said:

‘Very satisfied with the whole process, organised and straightforward, with good students.’
‘We took SEPnet students for the second year running and have been very impressed with the calibre, their capabilities and the general high standard. For your records we have just made a permanent job offer to one of the students…’.

Register your placement project, or projects, online here https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/EmployerRegistration2023/

Email Michelle Limbert m.limbert@soton.ac.uk for further information or for an informal chat about the scheme.

09Dec/22

SEPnet Employer Engagement Officer Role

School of Physics & Astronomy

Location:  Highfield Campus
Salary:   £32,348 to £39,745 Pro rata per annum
Part Time 17.5 hpw Permanent
Closing Date:  Friday 23 December 2022
Interview Date:   To be confirmed
Reference:  2074722WF

You will be based within the School of Physics and Astronomy, actively engaging with industry to develop and maintain a regional and national employer partnership network, which will enhance the employability of Physics graduates and meet the needs of employers. This will include the delivery, at Southampton, of the collaborative regional SEPnet* Employer Engagement programme, with a focus on organising the student placement scheme and physics-specific careers sessions for Southampton students. The role includes championing our students to employers and working with university careers and placement services.

*The South East Physics Network SEPnet is a network of nine universities in the South East of England, working together to deliver excellence in physics. It formed in 2008 and is overseen by senior representatives of the member universities and external advisors.

You will work under the guidance of the SEPnet Employer Liaison Directors and the Head of Physics and Astronomy.

This is a permanent post offered on a part-time basis (0.5FTE) with a flexible working pattern.

To make the most of this incredible opportunity, you will need skill level equivalent to the achievement of HND, Degree, NVQ4 or basic professional qualification in science or engineering discipline or equivalent industry experience. You will have great communication skills with the ability to engage both students and external partners.

Committed to tackling gender inequality, the School of Physics and Astronomy is Athena SWAN silver award recognised. We are particularly determined to address the under-representation of women in Physics and Astronomy, so we are delighted to have been awarded Project Juno Champion status.

We are committed to all of our staff achieving a healthy work-life balance, with flexible working hours available. With a generous benefits package that includes a contributory pension scheme, competitive holiday allowance, subsidised health and fitness facilities, a cycle-to-work scheme and a range of discounts, this is a place where you are sure to excel.

To take this fascinating next step in your career, informal enquiries to our Head of Physics and Astronomy, Prof Mark Sullivan on m.sullivan@soton.ac.uk are very welcome.

Application Procedure 

You should submit your completed online application form at https://jobs.soton.ac.uk. Please also upload a full CV. The application deadline will be midnight on the closing date stated above. If you need any assistance, please contact Michelle (HR Recruitment Team) on +44 (0) 23 8059 2750 or email recruitment@soton.ac.uk  Please quote reference 2074722WF on all correspondence. 

02Dec/22

SME-DTN success features in NCUB Report 2022

The National Centre for Universities and Business presented their State of Relationship Report 2022 on 1st December and delighted to announce they published our case study on the success of SEPnet’s SME-DTN collaborative PhD scheme funded by Research England Development Fund.  See here for a copy of the report and our case study appears on page 41.

Having faced many challenges and issues launching this scheme during a pandemic, with the commitment and support of SEPnet HEIs, employer contacts and RED Fund, we now have 8 industry-relevant PhD projects underway!

Our list of amazing and innovative PhD projects: can be found here: SME-DTN PhD Scholarships October 2021-2022 – SEPnet

Looking forward to working with our new PhD students!  

10Nov/22

From SEPnet PGR to CEO at OQC!

Dr Ilana Wisby, Founding CEO and Director, Oxford Quantum Circuits, (OQC) a former SEPnet postgraduate researcher at RHUL was invited to talk at this year’s Alexander Stavrou Innovation Lecture on Wednesday, 9 November at the University of Surrey. 

Over the last 4.5 years, Ilana has taken OQC from a patent, to Europe’s leading Quantum Computing as a Service company.  Whilst deep technical roots and priority IP is certainly a core part of OQC’s USP – technology and inventions alone do not make successful companies. OQC’s Value-led Leadership and focus on people are equally, if not more, important.

Ilana shared the lessons she has learned as a deep tech entrepreneur, with a focus on crafting high performance, elite teams and employing considered Value-led Leadership. 

Thanks Ilana for encouraging Surrey undergraduates and postgraduate researchers to undertake a SEPnet summer placement and for endorsing GRADnet’s training programme from your personal experience during your PhD at RHUL!

10Nov/22

Why is developing knowledge and skills in Public Engagement important for PGRs?

GRADnet’s online workshop: Developing knowledge and skills in Public Engagement was delivered on 9 November 2022 on Zoom by Dr Claudia Antolini, The Ogden Trust Senior Officer for Outreach and Public Engagement, Royal Holloway University of London.  Over 25 PGRs attended the online event and were given the following tips on how to do public engagement:

  • Identify a target public group/community and think about what your target group might be interested in and link your research to this.
  • How can you reach your target group and what do you feel comfortable doing: teaching? Performing? Speaking in public? Running a workshop? Designing a resource/class/audio-visual asset?
  • Do you have any hobbies that you could incorporate into your PE activity?
  • Activities you’ve heard about – do you find any of them interesting? Would you like to try your hand at them?

Claudia outlined the current SEPnet Strategy:  Core Programme 1: Schools’ Outreach Aim; Core Programme 2: Teacher Continuing Professional Development Aim and Core Programme 3: Public Engagement with Research Aim.

Delegates were made aware of the importance of “public engagement impact” for REF/KEF and how “the sector needs to recognise and challenge the processes that maintain and perpetuate the elitism of STEM. Widening participation in STEM requires changes in power relations and cannot be achieved by continuing with ‘business as usual’.”

Attendees found the workshop “really intriguing” and that there were “a lot of important topics to think about!”

Claudia and the Outreach team look forward to seeing SEPnet postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers at the next session to be delivered on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 at 12:00-15:30.  This will be in the format of an interactive workshop at the IOP in Kings Cross, London for 25 SEPnet delegates and will allow space to discuss their own research and form ideas for engagement. SEPnet Outreach and Public Engagement officers will lead and facilitate this session, using their experience and working with attendees to create impactful engagement plans. There will also be guidance on how to evaluate and evidence engagement, which is particularly important in the context of REF.  SEPnet PGRs can register here by 10 March 2023.

27Oct/22

GRADnet Induction Day 26 October 2022 welcomes new PhD Students!

Over 100 new SEPnet PhD students attended the GRADnet Induction Day on Wednesday, 26 October 2022 at One Park Crescent in central London.

Attendees were introduced to the three strands of SEPnet:  Employability, Outreach and GRADnet by Professor Jacob Dunningham, Executive Director, SEPnet. 

Tariq Himli, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Surrey, talked about his SEPnet Summer Placement at Occuity.  It was an 8-week placement setting up Monte-Carlo tolerance analysis tool.  The work involved interfacing between his own code and software for analysis and bringing ideas into a multidisciplinary group.  Tariq outlined why the placement was useful; he learned a lot about how software works; how to run them through code only; nice intro to industry work in general and it was a funded break from his PhD!

Laura Fryer, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Southampton also completed a summer placement this year at Openshaw & Co, Patent Attorneys.  Laura researched state of the art technologies; analysed patent documents and assessed whether inventions were new and inventive; prepared detailed documents of new inventions and made logical arguments as well as drafted responses to letters from the UK patent office.  Delegates heard how the hands-on experience was interesting and how Laura gained an understanding of what types of jobs and roles she might enjoy.  The placement was an opportunity to experience working in industry without leaving academia; it broadened her skillset and showed adaptability. 

Four parallel workshops were on offer:

  • DISCnet Taster Session: Introduction to Machine Learning using ATLAS Open Data delivered by Dr Kate Shaw, Lecturer, Dr Thomas Stevenson, Research Fellow and Zoë Earnshaw, Postgraduate Researcher, Physics and Astronomy, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sussex;
  • Introduction to basic Python & Introduction to Scientific Python delivered by Dr Tim Kinnear, Lecturer in Computational Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kent;
  • How to get your research published delivered by Tom Sharp and Rob Freeman, Institute of Physics;
  • Science Communication Skills delivered by Dr Claudia Antolini, SEPnet – The Ogden Trust Senior Officer for Outreach and Public Engagement, Royal Holloway University of London and Nuala O’Flynn, SEPnet/Ogden Physics Outreach and Public Engagement Officer at University of Hertfordshire.

Thank you to all our contributors for making this event a success this year.

After two years of online delivery due to the pandemic it was great to be back in person at One Park Crescent and having the opportunity to meet this year’s cohort of SEPnet PhD students face to face.  Everyone enjoyed meeting their fellow PGRs and found the workshops really useful.  

Hope to see some of you at a future GRADnet event.  See here for our training programme for 2022-23.

Science Communication Skills; Python; IOP How to get your research published and DISCnet workshops:

06Jul/22

Why the GRADnet Summer School surpassed any expectations!

Mariana Bento, National Physical Laboratory Postgraduate Institute and UCL Postgraduate Researcher talks about her experience at the GRADnet Summer School 4-5 July 2022 at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex:

“The SEPnet Summer School surpassed any expectations I had for this 2-day event. Becoming a good professional or researcher, is not just about being an expert in the field. It requires a full set of complementary skills, which comprises good communication, networking, awareness of our surroundings, collaboration, problem solving.

SEPnet knows this and collaborated with NPL, Skillfluence and employers:  Airbus; Capco; Deloitte; Dyad and WP Thompson, to provide an interesting and insightful number of workshops and sessions.  Topics ranged from having a better understanding of how to break the communication wall; finding the common points when starting a conversation with a new person to the foresighting topic which equipped us with developing skills on how to pick up the hints of the current events to better analyse possible future outcomes and perform better decisions.

When one brings together a group of knowledgeable and interesting people as was the case with the summer school event, the result can only be the best.

I had an amazing time during these two days.”

Foresighting workshop breakout group:

Intellectual Property Rights; NPL and Airbus Workshops:

Careers panellists:  Dr Adam Bozson, (Ex RHUL), Head of Data Science, Dyad;  Dr Leon Schoonderwoerd, (Ex Kent), Deloitte, Assistant Manager;  Jenika Karsan, Capco, Global Marketing Campaigns Project Manager; Dr Aoife Ivory, Senior Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, Ultrasound and Acoustics Group and Dr Hibaaq Mohamud, Higher Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, Nuclear Metrology Group. 

06Jul/22

First F2F GRADnet Summer School in 3 Years! 

The GRADnet Summer School took place on 4-5 July 2022 at the National Physical Laboratory for the first time since 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  It was great to be networking and socialising once again with researchers and employers.

Thank you to all our contributors for providing an amazing programme over the 2-day event:

NPL Welcome:  Richard Brown, Head of Metrology, National Physical Laboratory and Prof Jacob Dunningham, SEPnet Executive Director.

Networking Skills and Translating your Research/PhD skills to Industry sessions:  Zach Sorrells, Chief Technology Officer, Skillfluence Ltd.

Foresighting Workshop:  Dr James Claverly, NPL Head of Gov Relations and Dr Michael Chrubasik, Higher Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, Informatics Group. 

Careers Panellists: Dr Adam Bozson, (Ex RHUL), Head of Data Science, Dyad; Dr Aoife Ivory, Senior Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, Ultrasound and Acoustics Group; Jenika Karsan, Capco, Global Marketing Campaigns Project Manager; Dr Hibaaq Mohamud, (Ex Surrey), Higher Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, Nuclear Metrology Group; Dr Leon Schoonderwoerd, (Ex Kent), Deloitte, Assistant Manager.

Water Rockets and Laboratory Tours:  Andrew Hansen MBE, Outreach Manager and NPL PGI Students.

Employer-led Workshops:

Airbus:  Dr Jamie Wickham-Eade, (Ex Portsmouth), Study Manager and Systems Engineer; Ciaran Jenkins, Graduate Spacecraft Systems Engineer in the Earth Observation and Science Department and Michael Skreta, Systems Engineer in the Future Programmes.

NPL Metrology: Dr Emma Bendall, Research Scientist; Mariana Bento, Postgraduate Institute; Anu Bhaisare, Assistant Research Scientist; Nuclear Metrology Group; David Fairweather, Postgraduate Institute; Svetlana Kolmogorova, Nuclear Metrology Group and Dr Ben Russell, Principal Research Scientist and Science Area Leader for the Nuclear Metrology Group: 

Intellectual Property Rights:  Dr Julian Potter, Partner and Matt England,Trainee Patent Attorney, WP Thompson.

Delegates really enjoyed this year’s event:

  • “Thanks for organising a really enjoyable and productive couple of days”
  • “Great opportunity to improve ‘soft’ skills”
  • “NPL was the ideal location for the event, both because of its historical contributions to our field, but also NPL’s willingness to show us around their labs and describe their research.”
  • “My favourite aspect of the summer school were the people! Discussed not only our research, but also views on life and our past stories; the right ingredients for some new long-term friends!  Again, thank you for doing this so we could crawl outside our labs and learn so much about new skills and new people.

Hope to see more postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers at next year’s summer school in 2023!

Water rocket launch pad and rocket construction!

Skillfluence session: Translating your PhD research skills to industry

24May/22

GRADnet Online Workshop: The Application of Neural networks to Image Recognition – really insightful!

On 19 and 20 May over 30 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers attended the GRADnet online workshop:  The Application of Neural networks to Image Recognition.

The course was aimed at anyone interested in modern data science and AI.  The focus was the implementation (in Python) of neural networks and applying them in order to classify images. Delegates were taught how to first build some simple networks with a few convolutional layers, then how to exploit popular deep neural networks such as Xception, VGG16, Resnet and MobileNet.  

Thank you to Dr Michal Gnacik, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Physics at University of Portsmouth who designed and delivered the course on behalf of GRADnet.  

Attendees had the opportunity to look at the transfer-learning and hyper-parameters tuning and how to use them to achieve high-accuracy predictions.  Comet ML was used to track, compare, explain, and optimize their experiments.   Kaggle image datasets helped recognise emotions from the images of people’s faces and delegates looked at how deep learning can be used in converting speech to text using established systems such as DeepSpeech or Silero.

Delegates found the course “really interesting” and “useful”.  One student said “Thank you so much for the course. It has been really insightful and I can’t wait to have a go at the exercises!”.

GRADnet and the School of Mathematics and Physics at Portsmouth plan to collaborate once again and run this course in person in 2022-23!  Look out for the GRADnet Training Programme 2022-23 which will be launched in September.