Skills and Training — IBioIC Publications

HND News!

Through the Retain and Inspire programme at Glasgow Clyde College we have recently hosted Morag Garden from English Whisky, Alex McVey from OGBio, Sara Holland from Potter Clarkson and Trevor Hinchcliffe from Impact Solutions. The Skills Team are speaking to other FE Colleges about extending the programme and are always looking for speakers and companies to host visits – please get in touch with Kirsty Robb through the skills email (skills@ibioic.com) if you are interested in participating next year. We also have a survey live to explore your views on graduate attributes. Please fill it in here: Graduate Attributes Survey

MSc Programme Keeps on Rolling

I can’t believe our students are almost halfway through their year! They are getting stuck into Semester 2, whilst applying for their industrial placements. Thank you to all the companies who have submitted projects. We really appreciate the time and effort you put into developing the biotechnologists of the future. The students were delighted to visit the GSK plant at Irvine, where met one of last year’s students, who carried on working there after his placement. The student symposium and conference was a fabulous experience for the students, allowing them to engage with our PhD cohort and industry members. Recruitment for next year is now live! If you know someone who would benefit from this unique MSc, let us know. We are always happy to visit your University or deliver an information session online.

PhD and our Collaborative Training Programme

It’s always fabulous to see our PhD students and we’ve had some great training events this quarter covering marketing yourself online, data visualisation and animation training. Coming up, we will be unpicking imposter syndrome with Marc Reid before moving in to some more technical training including, design of experiment at the University of Newcastle and a new bespoke course on engineering for biotechnology. Our training programme is available on-line and we are happy to accommodate industry members at certain training events. Please get in touch!

Student Symposium

The annual student symposium was the usual mix of exciting ideas, networking and dancing.

The day started with student presentations and as ever, we were blown away by the science and the confident way it was delivered. Congratulations to Jessica O’Loughlin (first year PhD at Edinburgh) for winning the presentation prize! We then had presentations on employability from Murray Brown (GSK and incoming Skills Board Chair), and former students Elmira Mohit (XiasBio), Charlie Begley, (Glox Therapeutics) and Colm Boyd (Ingenza). A common thread through the presentations was maximising the opportunities from the Skills Programme and networking!

We then heard about funding opportunities, particularly the iCURE programme from Mary Jenkinson-Finch (BBSRC) and Alex McVey (OGBio). This programme is open to all PhD students and is staged to cater to the stage of development of your potential spin-out.

After lunch, and a scavenger hunt around the University, we were delighted to then hear from Jo Partridge about the journey from start-up to scale-up of MiAlgae. Jo’s engaging presentation gave the students plenty of food for thought! The formal part of the day concluded with a poster session with Michaela McFadden winning the poster prize. The day finished with a ceilidh at the National Piping Centre, which was the perfect way to put our networking skills to good use. We were thrilled to be joined on the day by two students from the In2Science cohort and look forward to continuing our collaboration with this exciting organisation supporting people from non-traditional backgrounds into STEM careers.

Mentoring

We are still actively looking for mentors for our amazing students. This doesn’t have to be a huge commitment – just a regular check-in (and access to your experience and networks). Sign up here.