Minerva’s Mentoring Successes
By Alice Brown
25th August 2022
Minerva has been commissioned for a third consecutive year to run one-to-one mentoring sessions with ‘Emerging Talents (Falling Walls Lab)’ national category finalists. The aim? To support these national winners in their bid to impress judges at the final of the Falling Walls competition, being held in November 2022.
The prestigious Falling Walls international science competition is an annual world-class pitch competition held in Berlin to coincide with the fall of the Berlin wall. The competition brings together a diverse and interdisciplinary pool of students and early-career professionals by providing a stage for innovative breakthrough research.
Minerva’s Director – Rhonda Smith – is delivering tailored one-on-one mentoring sessions for a pool of candidates who have won the highly competitive national heats held in their own countries earlier this year. These sessions provide an in-depth analysis of their national presentation, looking at content, delivery and impact, to help them improve their content, confidence and personal style when presenting in person… The skills gained through these sessions will not only benefit their final pitch in this competition, but also the candidates’ future careers and endeavours.
Rhonda Smith, Minerva Director, and mentor says, “I am thrilled to be working with this year’s group of innovative and inspiring researchers – I wish them the best of luck for the finals in Berlin.”
All Falling Walls category finalists will present to a panellist of judges in Berlin from 7th – 9th November 2022, with the candidates mentored by Minerva presenting in the ‘Emerging Talents (Falling Walls Lab)’ final on 7th November. Candidates will have the opportunity to network with world renowned experts from science, academia, and industry, as well as finalists from the other Falling Walls categories.
Feedback from previous candidates described the mentoring sessions as ‘exceptionally personalised experiences’ and ‘immensely useful sessions’ with 90% of candidates rating the sessions as good or above last year.
You can watch the Falling Walls digital sessions by registering here.
Success Story:
Following the one-on-one mentoring sessions provided by Minerva in 2020 and 2021, two candidates, were selected for the Top Ten list of the ‘Emerging Talents (Falling Walls Lab)’. Due to their outstanding presentations and innovative project topics, Minerva was able to secure their involvement with the Global Bioeconomy Summit.
Using the skills developed through Minerva’s masterclasses, the candidates had the unique opportunity to present their projects to, and promote discussions with, a world-wide audience at a workshop at the Summit. The Land Based Bioeconomy workshop was organised by the EU project BIOVOICES in which Minerva is a partner in collaboration with the EC’s DG Research and Innovation and the GrandEst initiative. It covered solutions and challenges presented by Covid-19, climate change and the switch to bio-based resources aimed at conserving the planet’s resources.
Organisers of the summit stated their appreciation for the inclusion of these presentations from two outstanding young scientists, adding that they did an excellent job in stimulating valuable and relevant discussions.’
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