Application deadline: Thursday October 9th at 23:00
Teams notified: Friday October 10th
Course dates: Tuesday evenings from October 14th, final presentations Thursday December 4th
- Location: Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) – West Cambridge site, Zoom links also available
- Sessions run from 7pm-10pm with pizza from 6.30pm
Have you ever wondered how to use new innovations to create social impact? Are you interested in what Cambridge can do to help? If so, then our new Social i-Teams programme is for you!
Social i-Teams investigates ways in which real Cambridge innovations can be used to create social and societal impact. Some projects will become future social enterprises, while others will become commercial companies with socially-impactful products and services.
By joining a Social i-Team, you will work for 7 weeks with students from across the University and a dedicated industry mentor. You will investigate the realities of using a real Cambridge innovation to improve people’s everyday lives, gaining hands-on skills and experience.
Past i-Teams projects include WaterScope, Majico, ApRES, Cortirio and Colorifix.
Projects for this course are:
- Crisis simulation to improve planning and preparedness for companies, NGOs and governments, with Professor Brendan Simms & Adam Wurr, Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics, Strategic Simulation Programme
- Using citizen science to increase the representation of “less listened to” groups in local decision-making and healthcare, with Dr Kelly Fagan Robinson, Social Anthropology
- Using VR to increase confidence in English as a foreign language and accelerate cultural integration, with Arina Zinoveva, Viktorija Koluzajeva & Dr Maria Cristina Cioffi
Social i-Teams is open to any student (under-graduate or post-graduate), post-doctoral researcher or member of staff at the University of Cambridge, Babraham and Sanger Institutes or the British Antarctic Survey, as well as any member of the Centre for Global Equality.
The programme includes weekly lectures from industry experts, team meetings and individual work. i-Teams present their final recommendations to a business and academic audience at the end of the term. The full syllabus is available here.
Past i-Teams estimate that their projects needed about 4 hours a week of individual effort in addition to the weekly sessions. As part of the projects, team members will need to contact external industry experts by phone and email – some calls and meetings may need to take place during office hours.
We are also running Innovation i-Teams this term (Monday evenings from October 6th, with final presentations on December 10th) – details here.