By Michele Barbour
The Early Career Enterprise Fellowship (ECEF) provides training, time buyout, resource, and specialist support to a postgraduate research student who wishes to explore the commercial applications of their research.
Applications for this academic year’s scheme are now open, and more information including the training offered, time commitments and the application form is available on our ECEF webpage. The scheme, not too dissimilarly to my role, sits at the intersection of innovation and academia. It’s an exciting opportunity to explore the commercialisation of research and pick up skills that will be useful for a future career, academic or otherwise.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Following last month’s blog post, I recently caught up with another of our 2023-24 ECEF cohort to hear about their experiences. Read on to find out more, and I hope you’re inspired to consider the Early Career Enterprise Fellowship!
Elena Fillola Mayoral
Elena is a PhD candidate in AI for Climate, and her research revolves around using AI to speed up greenhouse gas emissions reporting and validation. When reflecting on her experiences of our inaugural ECEF scheme, Elena shared these comments.
“Receiving the Early Careers Enterprise Fellowship (ECEF) has provided me with a new perspective on my research, particularly in terms of practical application and scalability. I explored how our system to infer greenhouse gas emissions could be implemented as a cloud-based solution and made accessible to a wide range of users, as well as researched the wider emission monitoring sector to better understand our technology’s role. The training was invaluable to learn more about the commercialisation journey and to define objectives for our potential enterprise. On top of this, I received six months of university-funded incubation support from SetSquared, an exciting opportunity to work with their team and Entrepreneurs in residence to continue shaping our path to deployment!”
We’re so pleased that Elena found the ECEF experience beneficial and are excited to see how her research and entrepreneurial journey continues!