Nokia

Nokia Entrepreneurial Internship Scheme

The Entrepreneurial Internship Scheme The Entrepreneurial Internship Scheme is a programme designed to aid and support young researchers who wish to collaborate with entrepreneurial technology-driven businesses. Through this collaborative partnership, businesses selected to be in the scheme will gain access to talented early career researchers, who have specified technical knowledge as well as receiving funding towards the cost of the project. The Entrepreneurial Internship Scheme is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). An international company that has recently adopted this scheme is Nokia. The intern Mina Ashrafi is a post-doctoral research assistant working within the Space Environment Physics Group at the School of Physics and Astronomy. Mina has studied all over the world from her home country Iran to Germany, Lancaster in the UK, where she completed her PhD and now the University of Southampton, where she studies space environment and space plasma processes. When the opportunity arose to work with Nokia, Mina was eager to apply for the scheme as she recognised an excellent prospect of applying skills gained during her research to create commercially viable products or services. Although the project on which Mina is working on is within a different area from her current field of work, there are a lot of similarities in the nature of the work. Analytical and problem solving skills that research students and staff gain can be applied effectively to research and development within industry.

The Intern: Mina Ashrafi Mina said: “The opportunity at Nokia appealed to me as it could help me to understand how a successful business is run. Also the chance of working in an innovative company with a global market was a rare opportunity, which could not be missed.” The placement involved developing tools/ applications in support of phone audio testing for both call audio, music playback and...