Congratulations to the winners of our inaugural #UCLGlobalInterns photo competition! We had some excellent entries and it was great to see what students have been up to during their overseas summer internship.

In third place was Yagmur Arica who undertook an internship at a women’s university in Tokyo. With the caption “I feel love” we felt her photo captured the beauty of Japan, particularly with the use of vibrant colour to showcase a traditional Japanese outfit.

In second place, we liked the simplicity of Dorothy Tong’s photo from Shanghai. Dorothy says, “I experienced a different culture both socially and professionally and gained valuable analytical and communication skills. I chose to work in Shanghai as there are so many job opportunities and it is the global hub for many businesses around the world.”

In joint first place, we enjoyed the photos and captions from Anna Sarasiti and Florence Fowkes. Anna highlighted how one of the things she took away from her internship in Berlin was in fact something more associated with London! She said, “In one of the most international cities in the world, Brit, Greek and Maltese comrades have a butcher’s at the Soviet War Memorial. Of all the things I have learnt in Berlin, I was not expecting to return to London having improved my cockney rhyming slang.” We also enjoyed the adventurous side of Florence’s photo from Delhi and she encourages others to undertake an international internship: “From culture, language, work ethic to the fantastic food, I learnt an incredible amount. Could not recommend an overseas internship more. Be proactive and send out those emails!”

Would you like to undertake a summer internship outside of the UK? Take a look at the Global Internships Programme webpages and keen an eye out for upcoming communications throughout the autumn term.

This year we’ve launched an Instagram photo competition for UCL students to showcase their international internship experiences and be in for the chance to win a £50 Amazon voucher!

Getting involved is easy. All you need to do is:

1. Either send us an email with your image and a caption to globalinternships@ucl.ac.uk or share it with us on Instagram by using the #UCLGlobalInterns and tagging @uclcareers
2. You will receive a response letting you know that we have received your entry. Your post may be reshared on the @uclcareers Instagram account
3. Three images will be selected on 11 October to receive a £50 Amazon voucher

Terms and conditions

• You must be a current UCL student or recent graduate (June 2019)
• Your image should showcase an internship experience taking place in Summer 2019
• You must have the permission of anyone other than yourself included in the photo

By entering you give permission for UCL Careers to use the photo in future promotion of the Global Internships Programme. UCL Careers reserves the right not to award all three prizes, depending on the quality of entries. You may also be asked to provide evidence that you meet the above conditions.

What kind of entries are we looking for?

That is up to you! We want to see and read about what is exciting and challenging about your international work experience; whether that’s in the office or what you get up to in your time off. Remember to use your caption wisely. Ideally, images will be of good resolution and quality.

Can I enter more than one image?

Yes, you can enter the competition a maximum three times. However, only one prize can be claimed per applicant.

When is the deadline?

Entries must be received by 23:59 (GMT) on 6 October 2019. The top three photos will be informed by 11 October. Other entries may also be shared on the @uclcareers Instagram account.

UCL Entrepreneurs and founders of Captum Technology; Sam Ghazizadeh and Hossien Bahrami were successful in reaching the final of the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition 2017.

The competition challenges London students to think of ways to improve the city, make it more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions. Sam and Hossien were selected from more than 300 entries to take part in the live final of the Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition on Monday 20th March. Each competitor was judged on originality, practicality, clarity, longevity and importantly – carbon savings. Competition for the two groups of UC groups came from King’s College London, City and Imperial College London.

They pitched to a high-profile panel of judges including perfume entrepreneur Jo Malone MBE, Jenny Tooth OBE from UK Business Angels Association, Niels Kirk from Citi, Christian Lane from Smarter.am and previous winner Arthur Kay from Bio-bean at London City Hall.

Here is an account of their experience:

‘We heard about the 2017 Mayor of London Entrepreneur competition from UCL Enterprise. As some of you may know, a previous winner of this competition was Arthur Kay from UCL who is now the CEO of bio-bean and wants to turn Coffee waste into valuable bi-products. We were greatly inspired by his success from UCL and wanted to give our idea a chance in this competition. UCL Enterprise has been extremely supportive in many aspects: they really helped us to polish our business model, to know our numbers very well, and also to prepare for pitching our idea.

The process of this competition started with submitting an online proposal where we had to explain our business idea in simple terms but in detail. Amongst 350 submissions which involved about 600 students, 10 groups were selected as the finalists and we were one of them! We were then invited to pitch our idea in two minutes in front of a panel of judges who were selected by the City Hall. We were proud to see Arthur Kay as one of the judges! We received very positive feedback about our project and how we should take it forward. The competition gave us a great exposure and also the opportunity to talk to various CEOs and investors invited to the City Hall.’

Sam and Hossiens idea in Mayor’s competition was a London-based and UCL home-grown start-up called Captum Technology – a clean technology start-up that is developing novel methods to turn carbon dioxide into valuable materials which can be vastly used in manufacturing industries. They aim to reduce the CO emissions from industrial plants in a financially viable way.

Sam explains: ‘Captum Technology has two forms of clients. First, industries who emit carbon dioxide as their waste gas. Our service to these industries is that we setup our CO2-capturing technology in their plants and reduce their CO2 emissions on a significantly higher scale than is currently possible. Our value proposition to these industries is that we offer our technology at no cost! This means that industries such as cement or energy, need not invest directly in their CO2 reduction. In return, we will require to have the full right/access to use their waste gas.

In industrial plants, such as cement, we direct the output gas streams into a large-scale apparatus where CO2 transforms to carbon. First, the gas flue will be inserted into a process that can selectively take up the CO2 molecules. Then, the taken CO2 gas will be utilised in a chemical reaction to form carbon. Carbon is our added value product with a chemical composition suitable for various applications. We aim to sell the carbon in bulk to various manufacturing industries, such as Steel.’

They go on to explain: ‘Although at the end we did not win the competition, our experience with Mayor’s competition has been indeed empowering. We had to be well prepared in front of the judges – very similar to the Dragons’ Den style. In principle, we had to present our idea very concisely but effectively. This, on its own, was a great skill we acquired from the process. At the end of the day, it’s all about how you present yourself and sell your idea in a compelling way. You want to show you’re best suited for a given opportunity.’

They are currently seeking support, endorsement and investments from interested parties in the UK to make our idea into reality. ‘We have to say that being a finalist in the Mayor’s competition has served us very well!’

Find out more on their website – www.captumtechnology.com

And for more information about the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition click here – https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/smart-london-and-innovation/mayors-entrepreneur-competition

Congratulations to the RUMS Boat Club for winning the London heat of the PwC Opportunity Challenge last year. Thanks to Luke McEvoy for this writeup of his team’s experience, and good luck at the final!

UCL Careers shares employability competitions on our website at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/events/competitions.

“Arriving at their London headquarters, it’s hard not to feel impressed by the scale, not to mention location, of their building down amongst City Hall and Tower Bridge, though on this occasion the nerves of going up against some of London’s best and brightest in PwC’s Opportunity Challenge Quiz heat were at the front of our minds. We collected our team badges and shuffled into the room; lots of tables, lots of people, and I doubt that any were here just for the free refreshments. The £1000 prize money was only going to one team, and talking to some of the others we were competing with, they weren’t going to let it go easily.

Sizing up some of our opponents didn’t help our nerves. “A post-grad, you say? In commercial law?”… to say that we, three medical students, felt slightly like fish out of water would be an understatement. Luckily, as the quiz got under way, our “game-plan” or, to be frank, a few nights of curiously scrolling through the histories of auditing companies and reading up on recent financial news, started to look like it may have done us a few favours, if perhaps not putting us on quite the same level as the economics societies and budding accountants we were up against. I would say that our eventual success, however, was less attributable to that cramming, but to our diverse backgrounds and skill-sets, which gave us an aggregate knowledge on a range of topics which helped us muster enough points to stay in the game.

And stay in the game we did, despite a round which tested our powers of estimation to the very core (guessing the number of words in Harry Potter etc.) and an (almost) embarrassing lack of rugby knowledge further back than 2013. It must be said, however, that even had we not achieved victory overall, the “eureka!” moments that are so crucial to success in the “Dingbats” round (cryptic clues based on wordplay) would have given us enough minor victories to write home about. In the end though, it was all about that prize money, and there were no prizes for 2nd place.

Hearing our team name, RUMS Boat Club, called out as winners brought a wave of joy crashing over us (something I suppose a boat club should be used to, though I have never heard the Thames described as “joy”). We won a grand! Even the boat club treasurer couldn’t stress himself out over this one!
Rowing in London is an expensive venture, but as a university club we strive to keep it as open as possible and winning this means that we can make the club affordable to freshers and others within the medical school who always wanted to row but never had the opportunity. It also means we can set about making repairs to boats that have been damaged for as long as we’ve been in the club, or maybe even someday get a banner for the club that isn’t a rain-damaged bedsheet! Now, with the club behind us, and coming into racing season, it’s time to focus our attentions on the most important competition of 2016… the PwC Opportunity Challenge final.”

By Luke McEvoy

From PwC’s website:  “Our Opportunity Challenge gives student clubs and societies the chance to compete against each other with financial funding up for grabs to help support your club or society. We’ll run separate university heats with the winners of each receiving a prize of £1,000. These teams will then enter the national final which will be held at an exclusive event in PwC’s More London office to battle it out for an additional prize of £10,000.”

Last year, UCL had 4 finalists and 2 winners, at the Undergraduate of the Year Awards and this year there are 11 Awards up for grabs to identify the top undergraduates in:

Computer Science & Analytics;

Management;

Law;

Mathematics, Economics and Finance;

Engineering;

Construction, Engineering and Design;

Future CFO of the Year;

Future Business Leader;

Female Undergraduate of the Year

Male Undergraduate of the Year

*NEW* Future Civil Service Leader of the Year

The rewards are great: winners’ prizes include exclusive internships, lunches with directors and trips to the USA, South America, the Far East and continental Europe and the final ten students in each Award will be invited to the Undergraduate of the Year Awards in Canary Wharf London on 22 April, 2016 where the winners will be announced.

If you make the final 10, not only will you be very close to a fantastic prize, you will have proved yourself to be amongst the best and most employable students in the country.

APPLY NOW  undergraduateoftheyearawards.com  where you can also find out more about each awards criteria, read blogs from last year’s finalists and winners and watch the video footage from last year’s awards ceremony