Surrey students continuing to thrive with ERA Foundation support
Since 2022, Surrey students have been benefiting from the unique iTEK placement programme, which gives them exciting opportunities within a range of tech-focused businesses based in the Surrey Research Park and beyond.
Surrey staff and students were delighted to welcome the ERA Foundation’s Andrew Everett back to campus recently as part of the Foundation's ongoing partnership with the University. The visit followed ERA's 2022 donation of £195,600 to establish the iTEK programme, an innovative new scheme embedded into a number of MSc modules at Surrey.
Andrew, CEO and Executive Secretary of the ERA Foundation, said: “The ERA Foundation was delighted to work with the University of Surrey to support the development and growth of the iTEK programme. The project is allowing students to gain real world experience working on live projects with high-tech companies. The iTEK project directly aligned to our mission by inspiring young people and supporting the development of the next generation of UK engineers”.
Jenny Ritchie, Head of Innovation & Impact at the University of Surrey: “These projects have provided our students, from courses including electronic engineering, AI and data analysis, with practical hands-on experience, helping them to learn how to work effectively as a team to address real challenges facing a business, deliver solutions and manage projects to time and budget. Together with the intrapreneurial training, this innovative programme, delivered through our Surrey Enterprise Hub, is helping to increase our students’ employability and to build partnerships with industry. We are thankful for the support and funding from the ERA Foundation, who have enabled us to set-up this exciting programme and we look forward to expanding the programme to more students and businesses over the coming year”.
The programme has now been running successfully for the past three years with engineering, software and business students working with companies including Bina Robotics, Edibl, and Yenu Health.
Surrey Computer Science and Electronic Engineering undergraduate, Natalya Pereira: “The iTEK project has offered me the perfect opportunity to work alongside a company on a real-world problem. It has been one of my favourite projects to work on as I have been able to practice and improve some of the skills I've learnt at university, apply them to the problem, and learn new skills from my teammates. It has also been a great opportunity to practice skills like time management and project planning that I will be able to bring forward into my career after university”.
The programme includes coaching and training in intrapreneurship, with students working in small teams to create new innovations for tech businesses. An iTEK project developed in collaboration with AirNode gained global recognition through the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2024.
Kate Bray, Student Enterprise Manager at the University of Surrey: “iTEK has become a strong model of academic–industry collaboration, embedded into selected engineering modules to give students hands-on experience solving real-world innovation challenges. With continued support from the ERA Foundation, we are delighted to extend the programme for another year - helping engineering students apply their skills in practical settings, while giving businesses access to emerging talent and fresh thinking.”
Jana Abou Fakher, Computer Science and Electronic Engineering undergraduate at Surrey: “The iTEK programme offered a chance to collaborate with industry on exciting, real-world projects. Through this experience, I enhanced my technical and problem-solving skills in both hardware and software areas, going beyond what was taught in lectures and assignments.”
The University of Surrey is actively seeking SMEs in the future tech and electech space to provide innovation challenges for highly skilled MSc AI students to tackle as part of this programme. Companies will be offered an innovation team for a short-term project funded by the programme.
To find out more about the iTEK programme please contact Student Enterprise Manager Kate Bray at k.bray@surrey.ac.uk
To find out more about the ERA Foundation and its work supporting UK engineering and manufacturing please see www.erafoundation.org
Notes to Editors
The Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI combines over 30 years of technical excellence in the field of machine learning with multi-disciplinary research to answer the technical, ethical and governance questions that will enable the future of AI to be truly people-centred.