20 October, 2022

The Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence and Extended Campus at MTU are proud to announce that the 24-month, Erasmus+ KA2 funded STEM Valorise project has reached the pilot stage.

The STEM Valorise pilot was successfully launched by Dr Zeynep Erden Bayazit representing the lead partner - Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Turkey - on October 6th.

 

 

The programme had been fine-tuned by the partners at an earlier project meeting in Istanbul in June 2022. As part of the general recruitment and gauging of interest, Dr Niall O’Leary, Research Fellow with the Hincks Centre, provided an opening session to outline what the STEM Valorise programme can offer to Masters, PhD, Post-doctorate students and early career researchers conducting STEM research at higher education institutions based in Turkey, France and Ireland.

Now in its third week, the 10-week programme will help extend the reach of STEM research beyond academia. Training sessions run online every Thursday from 09:00 to 10:30 (IST), with the final session taking place on 8th December, 2022.

The first two weeks have provided introductory materials, explaining what is meant by valorisation and exploring how research can impact society, with participants exploring the concepts through case studies and applying the information to their own STEM research and knowledge. To date, attendance has been excellent with 20 international students participating.

 

 

The first session was opened by Nina Brancovic of project partner Institut Mines Telecom Business School, France. Nina provided a comprehensive view of what is meant by the term valorisation. Dr Niall O’Leary led the second session, asking key questions about why we, as researchers, conduct research and how we can begin to extract more value from the research that we do, as well as how we can better factor valorisation in future research choices. We are looking forward to the remaining sessions.

 

 

The aim of the programme is that, by the end of the 10 weeks, those that have taken part in all of the programme’s international workshops, seminars and networking activities, will have learned:

• The definition of STEM valorisation and why they should integrate it into their research efforts;
• How to advance their research through external collaboration;
• How to think and act like an entrepreneur;
• How STEM research should be assessed and prioritised and
• How to scan their environment for assets to support valorisation.

 

 

 

The collaboration to deliver this co-designed programme is now being tested and we look forward to our first feedback from the participants at the end of the third training session.

 

 

To learn more about STEM Valorise, click here to visit the project page on our website.

 

Disclaimer: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.