The March 2022 FIBE2 CDT Industry Day was the best one yet! The objectives were to:
a) provide progress updates;
b) facilitate engagement between students, industry partners and academics;
c) collect industry feedback.
All objectives were met. We started with a quick round of updates from the investigator team on recruitment, governance, and the MRes, as well as industry and cohort engagement. We continued with a round of introductions for the cohort 3 students. We then played an excellent round of Mingle Bingo that provided an excellent opportunity to the CDT students and academics to mingle with industry partners outside of their specific project scope and start building new relationships.
After lunch, we had two excellent sessions of round table discussions; one directly relevant to the research topics of students and another on improving engagement in a post-covid world. We closed with an industrial advisory panel meeting that with discussions so interesting that it finished late. While the feedback from the panel are still being collated, individual feedback from partners were overwhelmingly positive. Many praised
a) the switch from a one way, slide based communication to discussion opportunities;
b) the quality of the student presentations;
c) the opportunity to meet others and discuss research topics they are not directly involved with, which led to requests from industry partners to join existing projects;
d) the discussion format of the industrial advisory panel in supporting the derivation of constructive feedback.
Many thanks to Ruth Faherty of Cohort 2 for the update on the fun inter-cohort activities and and James Walsh of Cohort 3 for organising the excellent Mingle Bingo networking.
We look forward to welcoming all partners, students and academics at the next industry day on 19 October 2022 at Cambridge. Details on the structure will be announced at a later date. Sneak peek: get ready for a Cambridge Union debate and dinner!