Aside from R&D/grant funding activity with companies, our focus over the last couple of months has been planning and promotion around our new community-focused programme. AWRC Innovation Futures is a regional pilot to take a group of 16-23 year olds and help them to better understand the health and wellbeing ecosystem and potential pathways they can take in to careers that support innovation in the sector. It is important to drive better awareness so we can help them take the broadest view on how they can gain employment in a key sector of the region’s economy – Covid has also impacted an careers provision over the last few years. We hope the programme will help each individual identify an area of interest to explore further and we have personal development funding to support their next steps. Lots of wider contribution from individuals and organisations we collaborate with, including some SIAN members – thank you.
Some positive news from companies we have supported:
- Istanbul-HQ’d Mindbehind have recently been acquired by Insider
- Aseptika joins NHS Shared Business Services new tech framework and have also had a couple of significant SBRI and Innovate UK grant awards this month
- New York based Therapha has established its UK subsidiary in Sheffield (despite strong encouragement from Leeds) and is also now benefiting from the P4SY programme.
If of interest:
- Motion Exercise CIC, the founders are graduates from UoS, are hosting their second ‘Motion Community games’ at the EIS. Watch the video on the Eventbrite link and come along – sign up here
Contact: Ryan Sylvester, Project Manager (AWRC) – ryan.sylvester@shu.ac.uk