Business Scholarship recipients - Annual Report 2018

8 April, 2019

I really had to get out of my comfort zone; you need to know what makes an idea unique.

Dr Nihan Aydemir 2017 Business Scholarship recipient

Eldon Tate

Eldon Tate will undertake the Advanced Management Program offered by Melbourne Business School. After completing his PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, Eldon co-founded and became CEO of Inhibit Coatings Ltd. In his role as CEO Eldon hopes to use the skills learnt through The Advanced Management Program to develop his leadership capabilities and build Inhibit Coatings into a successful deep tech company.

Hannah Zheng

Hannah Zheng will take a Postgraduate Diploma in Global Business at AUT. Hannah did her PhD in Physics at Victoria University, studying with MacDiarmid Institute Principal Investigator Dr Natalie Plank, and is currently working as a Materials Scientist at Revolution Fibres. Hannah is keen to learn more about global business, to reinforce the technical knowledge she currently brings to the projects.

Rob Staniland

Pressure is constantly increasing on the scientific community to provide answers to the broad range of complex issues we face as a society. Since Rob has finished his Ph.D. and started working for Mint Innovation, a deep-tech start-up company, he has come to appreciate the significance of the role that such companies hold in addressing these issues. By studying a Masters of Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship, Rob will ensure that he is in a position to help take scientific solutions to these issues out of the laboratory and to the market.

It was a bit of a black box for me - how do I gain an appreciation of how the business world works?

Dr Matthew Cowan 2017 Business Scholarship recipient

Sam Yu

Sam Yu will take professional development short courses in governance and leadership management from the Institute of Directors and Icehouse, which will further develop his Board and Investor experiences. Sam did a PhD at Canterbury University supervised by Professors Alison Downard and Richard Blaikie. Since then, he had been heavily involved in business development and marketing for start-ups to commercialise technologies from New Zealand. This involves exporting value-added products to the United States and Asia such as nanopore-based diagnostic tools and agricultural products with Lanaco’s innovative wool-based filters.

Akshita Wason

Akshita Wason will take the Masters of Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship at Auckland. Akshita did her PhD at the University of Canterbury, worked at the start-up Hi-Aspect, and is currently with the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor. She will use the scholarship to develop skills to incorporate the challenges faced by typical deep-tech projects from local market launch to establishing a global presence while studying general policy-induced effects (successes and failures) on the innovation ecosystem. She is presently a New Zealand curator for Hello Tomorrow, a global non-profit organisation to promote collaborations between entrepreneurs, industries and investors.