Young entrepreneurs in the making reach final of national enterprise skills competition

Two University of Leicester teams were coached by the Doctoral College to take part in the recent highly prestigious Young Entrepreneur Scheme (YES) heats, with one team lined up to take part in the national finals.

YES is designed to develop business awareness and an understanding of entrepreneurship in UK postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers. This goal is achieved through a competition in which those participating prepare a business plan for a hypothetical company

Our Biotechnology YES team took part in the Manchester heat, and won their stream, to qualify for the final. This competition has an entry of about 100 teams and so our team of Felicity Easton, Giannis Koukkidis and Jamie McCarthy, all from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation (3Is) have already done extremely well in making the final with their business idea of a method for detecting food going bad. The finals will be held in London on 12 December.

Our Engineering YES team of Adam Higgins (Physics and Astronomy), Bright Robert (Engineering) and Jamie Williams (Physics and Astronomy) took part in the Nottingham heat, with their business idea built around lightweight drones. Their performance earned them third place, behind contestants from Reading University and Oxford University.

Martin Coffey, Postgraduate Career Adviser with the Doctoral College team, commented: “The benefits gained from taking part in the YES experience are something that will benefit researchers in whatever career they pursue after obtaining their PhD.  It is wonderful to see our teams having such success in the competition”.