4-5 June 2025
Bushy House, NPL, Teddington
Enhance your research skills and celebrate history at our inaugural PGI Summer School Event on 4-5 June 2025!
This unique program is part of the 125-year celebration of NPL and offers a rich blend of training, networking, and cohort building experiences.
Innovation is no longer a nice-to-have skill, but a core competency required to excel in today's workplace, whether in an academic environment or industry.
In the Innovative Researcher programme, we introduce participants to a framework and set of mindsets, behaviours and processes that successful innovators consistently leverage in how they approach challenges, opportunities and life in general.
Featuring PGI Alumni Guest Speakers – Rhiann Canavan, Ilana Wisby and Lewis Hill who will share their secrets to success!
The programme explores six key pillars through highly interactive and applied group and individual activities. These pillars are based on significant research aimed at identifying the characteristics of disruptive innovators, modified specifically for researchers. The programme concludes with participants creating a personal "Innovative Researcher Action Plan", which outlines specific actions they will take to further develop their competencies in these key areas.
.
PGI Summer School participants have been granted exclusive access to this VIP networking event at NPL, where you will be able to expand their networks, meet top industry professionals and reflect on your Innovative Researcher Action Plans.
Jess is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College London. Broadly speaking, her research considers new materials for optoelectronic, spintronic and quantum devices, with a focus on chiral molecular materials.
She was previously an Imperial College Research Fellow in SPIN-Lab at Imperial, which is led by Professor Sandrine Heutz. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Fuchter and Campbell groups at Imperial College London, where she optimised these chiral systems such that can absorb/emit circularly polarised (CP) light for CP OLEDs and OPDs. For her PhD Jess concentrated on organic photovoltaics and the development of advanced characterisation techniques to better understand molecular packing under the supervision of Dr Ji-Seon Kim.
Outside of the lab, Jess is involved with several science communication and outreach initiatives. She is committed to improving diversity in science, both online and offline, and since the start of 2018 has written the Wikipedia biographies of women and people of colour scientists every single day.
In small groups you will explore how to:
Using LEGO® Serious Play® as a tool for enhanced creativity and communication, you will reflect on your unique skillsets and how these skills will be crucial in your future careers.
Day two of PGI Summer School will be concluded with a PGI Alumni Celebration at The Pavilion, Bushy Park, aiming to bring together as many PGI alumni to celebrate 10 years of the PGI. Expect gourmet BBQ, great company and exciting stories about alumni journeys.
We’ve done our research and over the past 10 years we are proud to have launched the careers of over 330 PhD graduates through the PGI; with 48% now in industry roles, 15% in Academia, 13% at independent research institutes and 13% in NPL (*data from 298 respondents in 2024).
During the event, we will be launching our latest 5-year report, hearing from a few of our Alumni and celebrating with friends of the PGI.
PGI Summer School participants can register for a FREE ticket for NPL Open Day (usually £3). Details on how to claim are provided upon purchase of PGI Summer School tickets.
Don’t miss the chance to look around NPL’s labs, speak with expert scientists and engineers, watch exciting liquid nitrogen shows and more – this is an event you do not want to miss!
PGI Summer School is held in association with South East Physics Network. The PGI would like to thank SEPnet for their support and look forward to welcoming your postgraduate researchers at the event.
The PGI was established in 2015 with the aim of becoming the leading institution for postgraduate research and training in measurement science in the UK. The vision for the PGI was developed through a strategic partnership between the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the University of Strathclyde and the University of Surrey.
We work with a range of academic and industrial partners to provide a prominent and distinctive centre for collaborative measurement science research and state-of-the-art training facilities to develop a highly skilled future workforce.
Our cohort has been growing rapidly since our establishment and we currently have around 200 students working on various multi-disciplinary projects with over 30 universities across the UK, working under the supervision of around 250 distinguished academics and scientists.
Our research and measurement solutions support innovation and product development. We work with companies to deliver business advantage and commercial success.
Contact our Customer Services team on +44 20 8943 7070