Case Study Claudia Aguguo

The mentoring and support Claudia Aguguo received during the YES competition gave her the confidence to pursue a career in technology transfer, and ultimately to help other researchers maximise the potential of their research to drive impact.

When Claudia Aguguo first heard about the YES competition, she wasn’t sure it would be the right fit for her. “You don’t see a lot of entrepreneurs or people in the innovation sector who share my background,” she explains. “But I decided to go for it anyway, because I’ve learned to keep an open mind in life – after all, I never thought I’d be doing a PhD, either!”

Claudia’s willingness to take a risk paid off, and she soon found herself immersed in the exciting world of entrepreneurship as part of a team of four postgraduate students from the University of Reading, developing a plan for a hypothetical business based on her PhD research.

The team was supported by staff at Reading’s Henley Business School through ongoing feedback and the delivery of supplementary sessions on all aspects of business planning. “It was really helpful to have so much extra support during the competition,” says Claudia. “Being able to learn directly from experts and hear about real-life applications of the new skills we were learning was extremely valuable. It gave us an opportunity to ask questions while making it real to us by giving an excellent insight into the world of business.”

To improve her confidence, Claudia also received a great deal of personal support and encouragement from staff at Reading’s Knowledge Transfer Centre (KTC), including from Business Relations Manager Dr Simon Cutler, himself an alumnus of the YES competition.

It was with Simon’s support that Claudia attended a career event hosted by GSK, where she met Dr Anji Miller, who talked about her career history and the LifeArc-AUTM Technology Transfer Fellowship programme. “Anji’s story really resonated with me, and seeing someone from a similar background doing such interesting and impactful work inspired me to apply for the fellowship,” she says.

Now, as part of the LifeArc-AUTM programme, Claudia is now on her way to becoming a fully-fledged technology transfer specialist, a role in which she will be able to use her own experience to help other early career researchers to commercialise their own research. She is particularly interested in working within the healthcare sector, helping translate innovative research into commercial products that can be taken to market to improve patient care. “I’m doing what I love to do most – solving problems by connecting people and ideas,” she says.

Meanwhile, the support Claudia received throughout the YES competition inspired her to go on to help other PhD students at Reading. With this in mind, she recently persuaded the organisers of the university’s annual Doctoral Research Conference to invite one of the members of the YES judging panel, Dr Fiona Marston OBE, to talk to students about her distinguished career in the world of business. “I think that early career researchers today are more curious about business than they have been in previous generations,” says Claudia. “Having access to examples of people who have pursued this career path is so important, because the stories from these role models are key to expanding the horizons of early career researchers."