Entrepreneurship Fellow

**Grade 7, salary range £37,099 - £44,263**

**College of Science and Engineering, School of Informatics/Department of Commercialisation and Industry**

**Part time, Approx 8 - 16 hours per week**

**Funding available for up to 3 posts, available to 31st July 2024**

The School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh (through the Department of Commercialisation and Industry Engagement) is looking to hire up to 3 Post-doctoral fellows who have submitted a Ph.D. thesis in the disciplinary fields of data Informatics, natural language process, artificial intelligence and robotics.

**The Opportunity**:
The School of Informatics Entrepreneurship Fellowship will support up to 3 post-doctoral individuals who recognise the commercial opportunity in the research and findings contained within their Ph.D. thesis or within another idea related to data informatics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, natural language processing, and or robotics. The fellows need to have submitted their thesis and have passed their _viva _, in order to be eligible to take on this fellowship.

The School of Informatics Entrepreneurship Fellowship is open to applicants who have recently (within past 4-years) completed their Ph.D. studies in the broad academic field of Informatics, artificial intelligence and robotics as represented by the 7 (including Design Informatics) different Institutes at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics.

**Further Information:
**The School of Informatics Post-doctoral Entrepreneurship Fellowship will financially, academically, and entrepreneurially (personal development, business skills, financial analysis skills, commercialisation networking) **support **the fellows on their journeys of understanding and experimenting with how to become an academic thinker and/ innovator **_who knows how to think like _**a **_Business Entrepreneur _**. The fellowship seeks to guide post-doctoral thinkers/innovators on how to make a business use case, find customers and earn money for a commercialisation idea that they produced as part of or after they had completed Ph.D. studies in informatics, artificial intelligence or robotics.**
- Entrepreneurship Fellows will get a monthly salary over the 6-12 months of the fellowship (University of Edinburgh Grade 7), in order to spend 70% of their contracted time to establishing the business development framework for commercialising their innovation ideas.
- While gaining financial and mentoring support to commercialise their own ideas, the fellows will be required to spend 30% of their contracted time to build knowledge around commercialisation (frameworks) for business operations, fundraising, and financial management for both their own ideas and for contributing to entrepreneurship teaching resources and tools in the School of Informatics.
- Fellows will also receive in-kind funding to help them produce demos of their innovations, so that they can exhibit them at commercial events (such as industry-specific trade fairs; informatics and robotics at technology fairs; private equity investment pitches). Travel and accommodation will be paid for fellows to travel to commercial/investment events.
- With the Entrepreneurship Trainer as a facilitator, the Fellows will have access to a wide range of opportunities for entrepreneurial support from key School of Informatics strategic partners at the University of Edinburgh. These may include School of Informatics strategic partners such as Edinburgh Innovations, Bayes Centre, Business School, Earth Institute _, _Careers Services, the Edinburgh Futures Institute (Design Informatics), the School of Informatics Industry Advisory Board, as well as overarching academic, entrepreneurial, personal development, and career development support through the College of Science and Engineering.

With the support of the School of Informatics Commercialisation and Industry Engagement Team (Business Development and Entrepreneurship Training), the fellows have an opportunity to establish their commercial operations framework with 6-12 months of financial support as staff members at the University of Edinburgh ( part-time work requirements of 8-16 hours per week, depending on length of fellowship ).

These entrepreneurial fellowships will provide/facilitate practical knowledge on how to develop a commercially viable business that has a financial and social impact that can be scaled up from an academic idea to an operational and sustainable business.

**Knowledge, skills and experience**

**Essential**
- Successful completion of a PhD (or submission of thesis and successfully passed their viva) within the past four years, in data informatics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, natural language processing, robotics, or a combination of two or more research areas covered through the School’s Research Institutes.
- Experience of project development and project leadership in a research context.
- Excellent written and oral communi