FLEET Research Fellow Dr Daisy Wang (UNSW)
It’s not easy to convince a group of PhD students and early-career researchers to take three days away from their research to complete a training course.
Yet this type of training can provide incredibly valuable skills for these researchers in their future careers and endeavours.
At Idea Factory 2019, a joint project with FLEET and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS), 30 researchers came together to complete a CSIRO-developed course in industry engagement and entrepreneurship.
In small, multidisciplinary groups, attendees pitched a product, learning how to take a product to market and presenting to a panel of entrepreneurs and high-school students.
Many researchers were surprised to find it was more daunting and more difficult to present to the highschool students than to the seasoned entrepreneurs!
In this exercise, school students represented the role of investors who may not know a lot about physics, so it was necessary for the groups to communicate simply and effectively with the judging panels.