2024 Wrapped

First cohort of Hub students start!

Let’s rewind to January 2024, when our first cohort of PhD students started at the Universities of Liverpool, Southampton, and York; our 2 part-time students that work in industry are currently studying at the latter. It has been amazing to see these students develop this year and learn from each other. We’re incredibly proud of cohort 1 and all that they have achieved so far!

Cohort 1 met in person for the first time within their first few weeks at the University of Southampton. From the outset, it has been incredibly important to us to facilitate cohort building activities, in person whenever possible.

Industry partner visit

A few months later, our postgraduate researchers met again, this time at an industry partner site! It was a great opportunity for our part-time students to show us and their peers what they get up to and explain more about their roles and the company culture! Our students loved viewing the site, and learning more about how research is applied within a company.

3-day training event at Imperial

Over the summer, we attended a 3-day training event at Imperial College London. Alongside some insightful talks from our partners, our students also had the chance to get hands on in the labs! This was an amazing opportunity that we know they thoroughly enjoyed. To make things even better, the sun was shining, it was 28 degrees, and the building had a rooftop garden and café where the iced lattes went down a treat!

Cohort 2 starts – October 2024

In October of this year, our second cohort of students started – they are based at the Universities of Southampton, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Nottingham, Oxford and Manchester. We have a variety of interdisciplinary projects within cohort 2, with our students coming from an array of technical backgrounds, including electrical engineering, aerospace, physics, and computer science! It has been lovely to see both cohorts integrate and work collaboratively.

Our first annual welcome event!

In November of this year, we hosted our first annual welcome event for our students to meet one another face to face and network with our partners. We had several interesting talks this day to provide our new students with some background knowledge on topics such as power systems, laser physics and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). We also hosted a social event the night before so our students could meet in a more informal setting! Read more on the event here!

Our Student Representatives

Earlier this month, we announced our 2 student representatives, Prem and Liam! They are both students from cohort 1 and provide very different perspectives on the student experience, due to Liam being a full-time student, and Prem part-time while working in industry. Our student reps will gather anonymous feedback from the Hub student body, and will relay this to the Hub Management Team who can then work to implement change and improve.

Virtual training event and Christmas Quiz!

Finally, to round off this amazing year, we held a virtual training session on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) followed by a Christmas Quiz! It is incredibly important for us to meet regularly, both online and face-to-face, so our students can feel connected and part of the community.

We’d like to wish our students and partners a very Merry Christmas and remind everyone to take this time to rest and spend time with loved ones! We can’t wait to see what 2025 holds for us!

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