London Met’s 2015 Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day is a hit with staff and students

The Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing annual networking event inspires students

Date: 25 June 2015

On 11 June 2015, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown, Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing opened the 2015 Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day (FEND15).

The event, organised by Associate Professor Yanguo Jing, was attended by over 120 employers, alumni, faculty staff and students.

Keynote speaker Dr Tom Khabaza, opened the day with a talk titled What to do when everyone wants to hire you: getting the job and doing the job in data analytics.

This was followed by parallel sessions from all three schools in the Faculty.

The School of Computing

The School of Computing presented talks from four high profile external guests who shared their expertise with staff and students alike.

Lauren Stark from Amazon presented “Innovation, Amazon, & You”; Metro Bank’s David Nudelman spoke about Securing enterprise environments; Tom Dixon and Naomi Morton from Swiftkey spoke about the process of Bringing SwiftKey to iOS; and, Kelly Klein from Student@Home presented on Helping IT students become more employable. Kelly and colleague Satwant Chana also delivered a workshop on how to improving interview techniques.

The school drew on its wide range of internal expertise with Professor Jing officially launching the new branding and website for the School’s WOW agency and showcasing its most recent projects.

Tolga Karatas, a BSc Computer Science student, presented an inspirational talk on Assistive technology for virtually impaired students.

The sessions concluded with two panel discussions, one on mobile technology and trends and the other on the benefits of part time study.

The School of Human Sciences

The School of Human Sciences welcomed external guests, Anna Davies from Therapists For You opening the talks describing how her company and how it can help graduates find work in Sports Therapy, and Dr Rocky Cranenburgh of Prokarium, delivering a talk on oral vaccines.

Like the school of computing, the afternoon sessions turned to include in house talent. Louise Usher, a London Met student, provided a highly motivating talk describing her journey on her preparatory year and how she came to the decision to leave industry and return to education.

London Met staff Natalia Zielinska, Raffaella Pontonutti and Nick Gardiner, presented their initiatives: the Work Experience Award Scheme, The Sports Injury Clinic and a Business Development Module respectively.

Kevin Campbell-Karn ran a well-attended parallel session, a CPD workshop specifically for Sports Therapists, which received extremely positive feedback from all attendees who commended the ‘outside the box’ and ‘lifestyle specific’ approach to treatments.

The School of Psychology

The School of Psychology talks aimed to showcase applied aspects of psychology giving attendees a broad view of psychology in the world of work.

In the morning, trainee Health Psychologist Sophie Edwards and recently graduated Health Psychologist Dr Ravi Gill presented their intervention work.

Dr Pamela Nkyi, Cpsychol delivered a session on job transitions addressing the areas we need to consider when preparing for change. Pamela used psychological models of behaviour change to demonstrate how the audience could prepare for job applications and interviews.

The day closed with a panel discussion about PhDs and Professional Doctorates. The panel was made up by Dr Esther Murray, Wendy Morgan and Dr Joanna Pashdag, Dr Angela Loulopoulou, Gary Pheiffer, all leaders on professional doctorate courses in different psychological disciplines in psychology at London Met.

Most sessions concluded with lively discussions and attendees had a chance to explore possible career plans in depth.

A current London Met student, considering a PhD, commented "It was great to have all these academics together on the panel. It’s so interesting to hear about the different areas of psychology, it gave me ideas about my future which I hadn’t considered before".

The student poster award

Over the course of the day more than 30 students presented their research posters with guests being encouraged to vote for their favourite poster.

The event was concluded with an award ceremony presented by the Dean.

Alastair Craig from School of Computing and Astrid Lodge from School of Human Sciences received the Best Poster award.

Enterprising capabilities

FEND15 was a huge success, providing students and staff an opportunity to interact with employers and building a greater understanding of the Faculty’s industry links and what it has to offer.

The Faculty extends its special thanks to Seema Patel, Natasha Nelson, Cornell Coggins and all the student helpers - Andrea, Naomi, Shaun, and Alastair.

Professors at the University sit on a panel discussion