TESTIMONIALS
WHAT OUR PARTNERS SAY
Read some of the testimonials from our PARTNERS highlighting some of the contributions we made to their institutions
Dr Heather Rolfe, Director of Research and Relationships, British Future
“The benefits of hosting a CGC internship at British Future included the student’s excellent quantitative skills, especially in managing and analysing large datasets, understanding of underlying reasons for immigration attitudes. The student also effectively utilised his data presentation skills. British Futures also benefitted from the student’s expertise and understanding, especially on immigration attitudes.
We would definitely recommend the Cambridge Grand Challenges internship framework to partners considering hosting an intern.”
Dr Heather Rolfe,
Director of Research and Relationships
Chen Zhang, R&D UK,
Huawei Technologies
“AI for data compression is a novel direction and has great practical potentials, we welcomed the University of Cambridge student’s external talents to contribute towards the developments of this direction at Huawei.
Having a student present enables us to contribute to the wider community by educating the students with our advanced expertise in the field and general experience on doing research. Additionally, having someone from a different background can help us to use a different perspective to spot research opportunities on changing the status quo. Andrei was also a good team member to the research team. The student demonstrated strong coding skills and actively participated in the research process. Research projects naturally have uncertainty, overall, the performance met the expectations well and the student had strong skills and was well-motivated.”
Chen Zhang, R&D UK
Dale Vieregge, Senior Director, APCO Worldwide
“APCO frequently engages with interns and external consultants when projects require additional resources and specialised knowledge. We hoped an intern would help execute and manage the project to completion. Sakari met our expectations well and as a more senior and experienced student relative to our usual undergraduate interns, his performance reflected this.
The student’s input concerned the production and organisation of a complex written deliverable which required significant project and information management skills. Sakari’s academic competencies were utilised in the creation of the client deliverable which was complex and therefore required significant information management and writing skills.
We were able to complete an important project for our client.”
Dale Vieregge, Senior Director
Dr Rebecca Freeman, Senior Economist, Bank of England
“Resources are stretched within the organization and it was great to have someone to work jointly with on this important topic. Thomas provided excellent input in the form of data/empirical analysis. He presented findings in the form of a seminar. The work was also drafted into a paper which has now been published as a working paper.
The skills brought to the project by Thomas included analytical and data skills, as well as an ability to translate findings to both technical and non-technical audiences. Thomas exceeded expectations.”
Dr Rebecca Freeman, Senior Economist
Dr Thomas Bohné
Founder & Head
Cyber-Human Lab
“Following on from the workshop with Microsoft Research as part of the Cambridge Grand Challenges, I was able to build a collaboration with the company that resulted in multiple joint meetings and presentations. Microsoft Research subsequently decided to co-sponsor a PhD student of my team together with the EPSRC. The project’s topic is on human avatars as co-workers and their potential to meet the needs of increasingly collaborative, networked, dynamic, multidisciplinary, and geo-distributed workplaces.”
Dr Thomas Bohné
Founder & Head Cyber-Human Lab
Collaboration on Identifying Factors Underlying Resilience to Age-Related Cognitive Decline
“It was inspiring working with you all Konstantina. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to work together in the future.”
Anna Dalglish, Senior Innovation Manager
“This is work that we do not have the right skills or academic background to take on ourselves, but we can help find willing volunteers. Jess is a brilliant mind that we could not access in our own team (although we have some brilliant thinkers, they are from different backgrounds to Jess). Jess gets to understand the way in which academic research can become useful in the commercial world as well as helping serve a superb social purpose.”
Simon Warsop, Life Analytical Director
“Sponsoring a studentship provides Aviva with an up to date knowledge on current techniques and findings and allows us an opportunity to provide inputs and steerage, rather than waiting to read a paper after research has concluded. Jess’ work is genuinely exciting and we can see real value to the wider society, as well and its academic and commercially applicable techniques.”
Sarah Applegate, Head of Data Science & Partnerships
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY
Read some of the testimonials from our students highlighting some of the contributions they have made, and the learning benefits they gained from working with some of our partners
“I was working with a team of brilliant minds, which made me feel like being part of something, both challenged and valued at the same time. They truly listened to my suggestions and integrated me in the decision process for the project. I come from a non technical background and was able to learn a range of computational skills: some machine and deep learning, some coding, broader knowledge about artificial intelligence and neural networks, it also allowed me to confirm my interests in working in this field and to network with many people ”
Isabelle Lorge
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, on her internship at Microsoft Research
“I am acutely aware of occupational environment and the individual differences persons have in their approaches to learning. Skilling individuals for the future, and facilitating continuous learning in a workforce as crucial to the future success of the business and the wellbeing of its employees. This placement therefore was an extremely interesting and impactful opportunity and one that will build upon my existing experiences.”
after“I have been fully immersed and engaged, as part of the Air Quality and Industrial Emissions team, in the policy development process surrounding the Clean Air Strategy. I have experienced first-hand how the responsible Minister engages with the Department and how it affects its work. Engagement with government organization and policy making bodies in general has always been part of my career objectives and this experience comes as a confirmation of it.”
Geoffroy Dolphin
Judge Business School after his internship with DEFRA
“We all grow older and we all hope to do so while . Dementia places a great burden on society and has always been an issue that deeply concerned me. For this reason, I chose to work on the Aviva project on the detection of factors predictive of dementia. The potential of having a positive impact on people’s lives is what particularly attracted me to the project.”
“My internship with Heathrow provided a unique opportunity to assess this from the perspective of an organization and employees, as opposed to the perspective of an educational institution and students. I was interested in the project itself because it was focused on understanding how to ensure that employees continue to upskill, which could potentially help to reduce the risk of unemployment. As an education specialist, this connects with my professional aspiration of promoting the sustainable development goal of ensuring decent employment for all. ”
“I am not sure I had anticipated pulling together something quite so high-profile and lively; it was a real privilege to work on such an important project. From juggling the diary schedules of some very busy people, to securing extra conference funding, and organizing an inclusive and relevant agenda, delivering the project to time and specification was an important challenge to meet. One of the biggest things I learnt was how to maintain my focus and drive and continue to aim high.”
“Having done the internship, I feel that I am better equipped to think about how I might communicate my own work outside of academia, and to convince others of the relevance of my research. It is often easy as a PhD student to think that the work one is doing is largely irrelevant to the outside world, so I found this experience encouraging.”
“The internship made me aware that I am an extremely capable researcher and had acquired transferable skills during the PhD process. For this reason, I would recommend doing an internship to any PhD student at the final stages of their PhD.”
“I just wanted to let you know that the Student Registry has recently confirmed my PhD – and to thank you for all your support over the past 4.5 years. In addition to the generous funding from the ESRC, which enabled me to conduct my fieldwork in Rwanda and present at numerous conferences, I’ve really appreciated being part of the ESRC community and learning about so many other aspects of social science research. I’m also hugely grateful to you all personally for the regular guidance and encouragement, training sessions and teatime catch-ups.
Beyond the PhD study, I also found it immensely valuable to conduct the placement at DFID. Although of course DFID has now merged with the Foreign Commonwealth Office, I’ve been keeping in regular contact with the colleagues I met there. Many thanks Konstantina for facilitating the placement and to the DTP for funding the opportunity. I want to convey my sincere and deep thanks to you and the DTP – it really wouldn’t have been possible without you.”