University of Technology Sydney - Faculty of Engineering and IT

Overview

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) was founded in 1988 and is located in NSW, Australia. A modern focus and a drive for innovation has enabled UTS to quickly climb global rankings, currently ranked number one in Times Higher Education top 100 universities under 50. With an overall ranking of 21 worldwide for all universities founded in the last 50 years.

An industry focus with modern courses and state-of-the-art equipment has enabled its degrees and students continue to become more renounced and respected worldwide. UTS has shown a passion to continue this movement through it's 1 Billion dollar investment to fundamentally change the way that teaching, learning and research is delivered.

Promoting Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

UTS is located in Ultimo which is the most heavily populated Start-Up area in Australia, similar to Silion Valley in the United States. Leveraging this, UTS has become one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial campuses in Australia. There are various programs implemented by UTS to encourage student entrepreneurship including but not limited to:

UTS startups which is an incubator aimed at mentoring and providing support for any student or recent alumni interested in developing a startup
Awards like UTS startup peoples choice, venture day and many others are aimed at providing extra funding to standout startups
Student Run Innovation and Entrepreneurial Societies on Campus e.g. Enactus & BCII Connect
Hackathons & Competitions including Project Pitch, Code2Learn, The Hult Prize and 3P Competition, designed to launch competitive businesses

Each of these programs are trans-disciplinary, with no limitations or restrictions to certain faculties, degree types or year levels. The culmination of each of these has enabled UTS to become an active player in the Australian Start-Up Community. Helping to grow and support the culture, values and organisations within the Australian start-up ecosystem.

Encouraging Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation (FTDi)

Over the years, UTS has gradually implemented a range of course work within subjects focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship to help students gain an in-depth understanding of these concepts. UTS has also implemented faculty targets to ensure that this momentum continues across all levels of the internal organisation. The univeristy has a dedicated department working on fostering trans-diciplinary innovation. The faculty runs courses such as:

Bachelor of Creative Intellegence & Innovation (BCII)
Bachelor of Technology & Innovation (BTI)
Masters of Data Science & Innovation
Masters of Business Adminstration in Entrepreneurship, and many others

These courses are designed to equip students with the diverse skills necessary to thrive in a future full of unknowns. In these courses, students are placed into high pressure situations with limited time frames and diverse teams where they are forced to experiment and learn from their mistakes. This leaves academics to take on the role of mentor as students are encouraged to not only develop creative solutions, but also to interpret the brief itself in interesting and differnet ways.

Opportunities at UTS

UTS has provided a huge range of different opportunities to help students grow and develop their passion for both Innovation and Entrepreneurship. These include,

Hackathon Weekends such as:

Project Pitch (Weekend Long Competition to create, test and launch Start-Ups, with over $10,000 in prize money)
3P Competition (Competition run by the Business Faculty focusing on People, Planet & Profit with over $20,000 in prize money)

Entrepreneurial Based Student Societies Including,

Australian Collaborative Entrepreneurial Society (ACES) Focused on creating Entrepreneurship activities for students.
BCII Connect, a student society dedicated to creating a community for and around students of the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation.

Facilitating University - Industry Collaboration

University of Technology Sydney has a strong relationship with its industry sponsors. The freshly introduced Bachelor of Technology and Innovation degree launched in 2017 was a result of high industry demand. UTS is constantly coupling up with their partners to host innovation and enter centered.

UTS has its own on-campus start-up incubator, a founding partnership with Sydney School of Entrepreneurship, through which individuals have the opportunity to get in touch and communicate with other like minded individuals as well as kickstart their startup ambitions. UTS also effectively collaborates with industry partnership to contribute to the wider growth of its students. This year UTS has introduced an internship program with its partners EnergyLab, Fishburners and Microsoft to offer 20 students internships in the startup sector, to essentially give these proactive individuals an insight into the startup environment and help them form those entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets in a more practical setting whilst also incentivise them by contributing their achievements as credit points towards their university degree. Alongside the university also offers Scholarships sponsored by its partnerships namely (Metal Trades Industry Association of Australia (MTIA) specifically tailored around entrepreneurship and innovation (John Heine Memorial Foundation Scholarship in Entrepreneurial Engineering)

This university also has a reputation for being an extremely practical university, focusing on and encouraging industry placements, internships and practical experience throughout courses. This focus has enabled university students to better understand the job market and get real life experience throughout their degree.

Engaging with regional and local economic development efforts

Start-Up Successes at UTS

UTS’s constant support and entrepreneurial education has assisted may students develop million-dollar start-up companies straight out of university. Some of the companies developed and formed in the UTS environment include:

Cube rider, which is the first private Australian company to put satellites in space
Wine stash, which is predicted to exceed profits of 3 million dollars during its fourth year.
Cloud Construction, who won the 2016 Virginia Tech Challenge Pitch in the U.S. Read more about this here

UTS has a redesigned innovation and entrepreneurship program, called UTS Startups (formally UTS Hatchery), where students can get their idea of the ground. Having partnered with Fishburners, an Australian tech startup community, students are able to bring their ideas in the real world, and bridge the gap between studying entrepreneurship and getting a startup off the ground. Read more about their partnership at http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2018/07/fishburners-partnership-puts-uts-students-startup-ecosystem

On top of this, as part of UTS's campus vision, several new technology labs and prototyping spaces have opened, including the UTS ProtoSpace, Data Arena and Tech Lab. These resources will be used to not only support student startups, research projects and postgraduate study, but also give staff and students the opportunity to work with some of the latest, cutting edge technology on offer and engage in sponsored partnerships with external companies in developing the solutions of tomorrow.

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School:University of Technology Sydney