The Mentor4Research program at KI has kicked off!

Participants at the 2019 Kick off meeting at Biomedicum, KI Campus Solna

Thursday 7 February the Mentor4 Research program at KI 2019 was formally started, managed by KI Innovations and sponsored by StratNeuro, one of the Strategic research programs (SRPs) at KI.

Seven scientist from the neuroscience community and one researcher from the diabetes field at KI gathered in the BioMedicum building with their respective mentors for the first group meeting in the program. The M4R program will run until November 2019, is free of charge and includes lectures and workshops in addition to mentoring.

All researchers had already met atleast once with their mentor before the kick-off. Previous M4R participants (Scientists and Mentors) dicussed their learnings from earlier programs. Exciting research projects along with expectations and some background about their mentors were brifefly presented by this years researchers in their 120 sec pitch. Each mentor shared why they enrolled as mentors, their plans for their mentee during the program and general thoughts and advices based on their experiences from other mentorship programs. The mentors bring many years of experience from executive leadership roles in the life science industry (pharma, biotech, medtech, venture capital) and are hand-picked based on each researcher's individual situation and needs.

The scientists in the 2019 program are:

André Fisahn, Elisa Floriddia, Eva Hedlund, Sophie Erhardt, Lilly Schwieler, Malin Kele and Sebastian Lewandowski and Indranil Sinha.

The mentors in the 2019 program are:

Uli Hacksell, Johan Lund, Karin Mellström, Hugh Salter, Pirkko Tamsen, Johan Christenson , Christer Möller and Björn Varnestig.

- We look forward to a very exiting and fruitful year together with the participants of the M4R program at KI, says Mats Ferm, business coach at KI Innovations and responsible for the Mentor4Research program.

What is Mentor4Research?

Mentor4Research (M4R) is aimed at researchers who are interested in learning more about the commercialization of research and collaborating with the business community. It is a popular and exclusive program for scientists who want to widen their thinking and see what possibilities exist for their own research. It is based on a successful 10-year track record from the M4R program at the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA -Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien) who developed the concept, and with further learnings from the current program at Uppsala University (see link for further details).