Science Show-off (can be Engineering Show-off too)

Some of the Bristol EngD community have been tweeting today about Science Show-off. This seems to be similar to PubhD (or InngD, as we called it):

It’s a chaotic open mic night for scientists, science communicators, science teachers, historians and philosophers of science, students, science popularisers and anyone else with something to show off about science.

It happens at least once a month in London (the next one is at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Wednesday 5 February), and also all over the country - the Bristol gig is on 23 January at the Grain Barge at Hotwells and according to a @ScienceShowoff Tweet: "Woop. We'd love to have engineers on stage".

Signed-up performers take to the stage to show off their science (engineering). They might:

• Show a film they just made
• Try out a new demo
• Practice a new science comedy set
• Tell us about their new discovery
• Perform a 9-minute play about science
• Play their new song about protons
• Tell us what they’ve been up to
• Predict the future
• Give us a taster of their science-themed Edinburgh show
• Read us their latest science poem
• Try out a bit of a new science lesson on us
• Play us a short radio documentary
• Experiment on the crowd
• Read us a blogpost
• Perform an interpretive dance about science

Or anything else…

Update (13 January 2014) - EngD Research engineer Natasha Watson (from the IDC in Systems at University of Bath, and sponsored by Buro Happold) is talking at the Bristol Science Showoff event on 23 January (see post) at the Grain Barge:

Natasha will be telling you the story of the three little pigs… with a twist: building houses from sticks and straw isn’t too bad after all.

Understanding the EngD impact

A highlight of last week's AEngD annual conference in London was the presentation of initial findings from a pilot study looking at the impacts of EngD research.

The study, funded jointly by the AEngD and the EPSRC, was undertaken by a team from Manchester Business School, led by Dr Fumi Kitagawa, and the interim summary identified five main areas of impact:

• generation of new knowledge - "increased in-house knowledge and research outcomes in the short/mid-term, as well as a long-term approach to technology problem solution and business change."
• innovation-related outputs and outcomes - these included licensing of patents, formation of spin-out companies, new product/service development, new market entry, business process improvements and faster time to market.
• pan-industry knowledge networks and collaboration - "Knowledge generated by one firm often diffuses into the industry as a whole through collaborative relationships, through supply chains or through movement of human capital."
• human capital and skills development - EngD research enhanced REs career paths, industrial partners' skills and the pool of talented future leaders across a sector
• economic benefits - Examples include EngD researchers identifying annual cost savings for sponsors of £2.4m and £3.0m. A patented therapy eventually valued at £20 billion. For every pound invested by EPSRC, one centre identified a further £1.77 industry investment in EngD research.

#AEngD2013 One EngD researcher (with an environmental bent) reduced their sponsor's operating costs by £5,000,000. Wow.
— Bengt Cousins-Jenvey (@BengtCJ) November 26, 2013

There were also direct economic benefits to the EngD researchers themselves. During her conference presentation, Fumi highlighted that EngD candidates were more likely to command higher salaries than researchers who had undertaken CASE PhDs: 33% of EngD graduates earn over £35,000 per annum compared to c. 13% of CASE PhDs.

There was also an interesting discussion about retention of EngD graduates by their industry sponsors (the study suggested that only about a quarter of EngDs remained with their sponsor upon completion of their research project). Fumi suggested some employers regarded the research as a fixed-term project; it was also evident that some employers didn't make competitive offers of employment to their EngD graduates with the result that they moved to other employers.