You Got To Be In It to Win It

Well the Christmas and New year break is over and it's time to fully engage in my PhD once again. So 2016 starts full steam ahead, having successfully bid for an Innovation Voucher.

The aim of the scheme is to fund projects with a value up to £5,000 which drive innovation, leading to new products, services or processes that will benefit the company, university, research institution or further education college and the Scottish economy, such as securing or creating jobs, or allowing the company to expand into new markets. The funding will be allocated by Scottish Funding Council and in collaboration with Mclaren Masonry Ltd., and Heriot Watt University we will seek to enhance existing business processes and provide a framework for quality assurance resulting in enhancing performance, productivity, and thereby supporting business growth.

This was my first bid for funding, not only was it successful more importantly, it was a great experience, and I’ve learnt some valuable lessons;

1.For the bid to be successful, it is important to have a strong network of people - a big thank you to Dr.Mohamed Abdel-Wahab (my research supervisor), John Renwick (Energy Skills Partnership -project manager) for their invaluable feedback,advice and support.

2.Be passionate about the project!! without passion how are other people going to engage with your idea?

3.Pay a lot of attention to the costing.

4.Meet the criteria

5.Intellectual Property- Luckily, Heriot Watt Technology Transfer and Licensing department agreed to help me with this which made my life much easier.

Above all for me, it has been really inspiring to see that people are really interested in your research and even more inspiring to see the belief that people have in my research and on the impact it can have on people.