The CDRC Masters Research Dissertation ProgrammeGuy Lansley - UCL

• The programme gives companies the opportunity to invite a masters student to undertake a research project for them

• Students are entered into a competition to win three cash prizes (£500, £250, £250) funded by the CDRC

• Students usually carry out the research at their universities with the support of their university supervisors

• Students and supervisors will be invited to an academic conference in October 2016

Summary

• Sponsor• Projects may address important horizon-

scanning questions• High impact case studies for universities• Positive implications for postgraduate

student recruitment

• Student• A unique opportunity to work with an

industrial partner• First hand research experience in applied

problem-solving• (Often) an opportunity to work with private

retail data

Incentives

• All projects must involve data on consumers or the retail sector• This can include open source data

• Topics typically seek to establish new information from either investigating novel techniques or exploring new data sets

• Alternative projects evaluate data access and data sharing

Topics

• Sponsor companies delegate one member of staff to act as an industry supervisor for the student to correspond with

• Sponsors will be required to select an appropriate student from a small number of applicants forwarded by the CDRC

• Students and their industry supervisors usually hold a small number progress meetings during the research phase

• Sponsors are asked to provide the student with a £500 bursary, and also fund travel expenses upon successful project completion

Industry Sponsors

Projects proposed by industry representatives

Projects advertised to Masters students on the CDRC website

Industry representatives meet with candidates to select an appropriate student

Research takes place

Dissertations are submitted

Conference

Timeline for 2016

Dec 2015

Jan 2016

Jan - Apr

May - Aug

Sep 2016

Oct 2016

• Prospective sponsors• Visit www.cdrc.ac.uk/retail-masters and read

the Information for Retailers page• All proposals will be reviewed before they are

accepted • Deadline for project proposals is Friday 4

December 2015

• Prospective Masters Students• Visit www.cdrc.ac.uk/retail-masters from

January 2016 to browse the available projects for the 2016 programme

• Details on how to apply also online

To participate

Outputs from 2015

• The 2015 Judging Panel comprised of Bruce Jackson (ESRC), Tim Rains (Sainsbury’s) and Dr Chris Lloyd (University of Liverpool)

Judging

Industry

Research Council

University

• Three-tier Data Access

• Secure Facilities

• Trusted

Researchers

• Governance

• Safe resultswww.cdrc.ac.uk