April 2, 2020, by Lisa Chin
U21/PwC Innovation Challenge 2019/20
This post is contributed by Dr Tissa Chandesa, Research Training Development Manager.
Final update
2019/20 marked the second time that University of Nottingham is taking part in the U21/PwC Innovation Challenge competition.
U21/PwC Innovation Challenge is an international university competition and global opportunity to showcase researcher skills to Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) and its client base, via a short 3-minute video clip response to a pre-set challenge. U21/PwC Competition winners will unlock and have access to unique training and professional development opportunities with one of the world’s leading employers. The Innovation Competition aims to help research students:
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develop their academic, critical thinking, presentation, and research communication skills
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support them to distil and effectively explain their research or insight into contemporary, globally important work-related issues within a three-minute window, in a language appropriate to an intelligent but non-specialist audience
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prepare for and produce a self-made 3-minute video clip addressing global work-related challenges
This year’s pre-set challenge question were:
How can universities help individuals gain a broader perspective on the long-term impact and consequences of their day-to-day actions on people, society and the environment? What types of jobs will an environmentally-sensitive economy need, and what is the best way to prepare students for them?
Over the duration of January to February 2020, two internal rounds took place. The first internal round was to find our UNM representatives while the second internal round was a tri-campus round to find 4 finalists to represent the University of Nottingham at the U21/PwC finals.
The UNM internal round was won by Kho Xiang Juan from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. As the UNM winner, Xiang Jun has won RM1,500 conference fund that she can utilise to attend any conference of her choosing.
A total of 10 entries took part at the tri-campus round. It was a highly competitive review process and after careful review of all entries, the panel declared Andrea Alice Konta, Francois Seys, Deepesh Chathuranga Jayasekara and Sen Yang as University of Nottingham finalists for the U21/PwC final round. Two Nottingham researchers were then shortlisted for the final ten. The two researchers are Andrea Alice Konta and Deepesh Chathuranga Jayasekara.
On 31 March 2020, U21/PwC announced the three winners for the 2019/20 U21/PwC Innovation Competition. The international judging this year comprised of PwC Partners, representatives from Higher Education and Humberto Jimenez Martinez, senior consultant at PwC and the 2018/19 U21/PwC competition winner. This year’s competition attracted 44 entries (an increase of 19 from last year’s competition) from 17 universities in the U21 network.
Our two entrants, Andrea Alice Konta and Deepesh Chathuranga Jayasekara were both selected as runners up in the competition. They have each won an exclusive tailor-made coaching session with the PwC Academy, and access to PwC’s online courses to help with their training and development.
Below are the links to the winners and runners up videos:
Winners:
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James Tait, the University of Melbourne
https://vimeo.com/392165211
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Christopher Girardi, the University of Melbourne
https://vimeo.com/392165087
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Daniel Student, the University California (Daniel was a runner-up in this competition last year)
https://vimeo.com/392164651
Runners Up:
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Andrea Alice Konta, 3rd Year PhD student in Engineering
https://mediaspace.nottingham.ac.uk/media/AAKonta+U21-PWC+2019-2020+Innovation+Challenge/1_ltz5gkzf
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Deepesh Chathuranga Jayasekara, 1st year PhD student in Engineering
https://mediaspace.nottingham.ac.uk/media/%5BUNNC+2020%5D+DEEPESH+CHATHURANGA+JAYASEKARA_PwC+challenge/0_qiw2tzfq
I am sure that you will all join me in congratulating James, Christopher, Daniel, Andrea and Deepesh on their success and achievement. Well done!
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