Guest post from Caroline Wood, a PhD student in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield. This blog post was originally published on Caroline’s blog, Science as a Destiny. Photographs courtesy of Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship).
My life seems hectic enough with my full-time research, voluntary commitments, blogging and science writing… So is it really a good idea for me to enter the prestigious BiotechYES Challenge as part of a team from the University of Sheffield? But I just cannot resist such a good opportunity! The challenge of this competition is to come up with an idea for a novel biotechnologically based product or service and draw up a business plan to pitch to a panel of industry experts. In the process, teams develop their financial awareness, meet major biotech industry players and receive expert training from business mentors. Having out my name down, it was now up to me to represent my team at the Briefing Session held at the University of Nottingham.
I had hoped that this competition would be a bit of ‘fun’ with plenty of networking and career-enhancing workshops thrown in. But on entering the lecture theatre at Nottingham University’s Business School, I suddenly realised just how serious this was going it be! The room was packed to the very back row with delegates from over a hundred teams, from across the whole UK. I was lucky to only have had to travel from Sheffield! There was a steely edge amongst the chatter and it was clear that these people hadn’t come here for a holiday. Fortunately I spotted Emily Seward, who is also in the Gatsby Plants Network, so had a friend to sit next to. It’s funny how these plant scientists crop up everywhere!