Liu Shi

Participating in the RisingWISE programme has helped me to rise and grow as entrepreneur. It helped me to take the first step and led my entrepreneurship journey gradually. During the program, I was hugely impressed by the invited amazing and intelligent female experts who shared their entrepreneurship experience. Although the program only contains three weekends, the strong community network keeps sharing related resources and opportunities. For example, thanks to the RisingWISE programme sharing an opportunity at Saïd Business School (SBS), I became an Ideas 2 Impact (I2I) Fellows and had the opportunity to join with Executive MBA students for two 4-day course modules in the 'Strategy and innovation' elective. Attending this course further led me to work with two MBA students on shaping the spin out process on the basis of my research. As a result, we joined Oxford Innovations pre-incubator cohort as a team to further explore more opportunities. I must admit the RisingWISE programme plays a central role in my entrepreneurship journey. I would not have done all this without having first attended this programme and I cannot appreciate more.

Participating in the RisingWISE programme shifted my career from pure academic research to translational research. I have done research for nearly 7 years while I barely thought of translating them into business. The RisingWISE programme opened my mind and empowered me to do so. It continuously provides us rich resources and an incredible network. We can easily reach out to people within the community and beyond. For example, thanks to RisingWISE, I have talked to lots of founders and gained knowledge on intellectual property protection, market research, drafting business plans, the spin out process and so on. All those experiences are extremely useful for my entrepreneurship journey as well as my future career development.

The impact of participating in the programme to me is life changing. It has boosted my confidence and broadened my horizons. I do now believe that the impact I can have is so much greater than ever before. I feel like I have a community who have my back and I will pass the support to help as many women as I can in the future. I therefore highly recommend every woman to take part in this programme because I am sure it will be life changing for them as well.

Liu Shi

Postdoctoral Researcher, Translational Neuroscience and Dementia Research Group, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford