EIT Health Alumni share experiences of Industry & Innovation Day

Event held 1-3 March 2019 in Mannheim, Germany

The EIT Health Alumni Network joined forces with the Industry & Innovation Day of the International Master in Innovative Medicine (IMIM) from 1-3 March 2019 in Mannheim, Germany. Here they share their experiences of the event and explain how they benefited from it.

In February 2019, EIT Health Alumni Network launched a call for applications offering tickets to the event, which was organised by the IMIM activity. Five motivated alumni were chosen from among a number of applicants.

Our EIT Health Alumni Coordinator for Germany, Jagadeesh Gandla, gave a lecture about his journey from academia to industry, both as an EIT Health Alumnus and a former researcher.

Read below testimonials from some of our Alumni who took part in the event.

Luís Rita

IMIM Industry and Innovation 2019 was remarkably well organized by Lenka and Susanne. On the first day, a tour around Cubex 41 showed us what kind of research was being done, in the innovation center, by Fraunhofer and some start-ups. On Saturday, an incredible panel of speakers from different areas told us about their professional/academic/personal experiences during their journeys in industry/academia.

This allowed me to gain a set of insights regarding what is expected from us in these 2 disparate environments. By the end of the day, a poster session took place. This part was challenging in the sense I had the opportunity to brainstorm some of the key points of my project and to better prepare the presentation of my thesis, by the end of the semester.

Sunday marked the last day of this fantastic event. As final outcomes, I highlight the brainstorming opportunities around my project, the incredible people (students and professors) I knew from these 3 top European universities and, now, it is much clearer to me that a PhD in Data Science/Bioinformatics should be my next step. A big thank you, Miriam…

Afrin Sultana

About the program I can say, it was really helpful for me specially at the stage when I am about to finish my masters degree. The program gave me new points to think about my PhD and future career.

I also presented my previous research work in the poster session and got feedback. During the networking session, I not only received advice from the guests but also shared my experience of research at different European institutions. I really liked the sessions where invited speakers shared their wise feeling about working in industry or academia.

What are the opportunities in industry, how the work-life balance is in the sector, how networking helps to find a new job – were things I got to know from those sessions. Also Jagadeesh from the EIT Health Alumni Board shared his experience and informed us about scopes for EIT Health Alumni to join different programmes. Thanks EIT health for giving me the opportunity of learning, networking and presenting my first international poster; thank you really a lot.

Anna Vidina

It was a good experience to visit the Industry & Innovation day 2019 in Mannheim. I enjoyed the visit to the Mannheim start-up center CUBEX and talking with the people involved in running facility. It was a great opportunity to ask members of the start-ups about how long it took them to start the business and talk about their progress on the way there.

On the second day I presented a poster on my current internship project at Vanadis Diagnostics in Stockholm. It was great to see interest from students and some more senior researchers. Despite the shortened time that was allowed for the poster session, I hope that students got inspired to look outside the academia for their internship possibilities!

The Alumni Network would like to extend a special thanks to our partners of the International Master in Innovative Medicine (IMIM). IMIM is jointly organised by three European Top 100 Universities: The University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the University of Heidelberg in Germany and Uppsala University in Sweden.

Visit the International Master in Innovative Medicine homepage