Finalist

Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award

Eryadi Kordi Masli

Finalist of the Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award

Swinburne University of Technology - Australia

"From lab to market: Mentoring students and scientists"


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Summary

My teaching philosophy, Learning by Doing, illustrates my drive towards excellence and innovation in learning and teaching techniques through the development of authentic learning experiences that embed significant opportunities for experiential learning for students. My teaching of Venture in Action (VIA) embodies the very core of Swinburne University of Technology’s Horizon 2025 Strategy: Moon Shot 2, creating and empowering Swinburne graduates that are job creators of the future, harnessing technology and entrepreneurship that enables Swinburne to take ideas from the lab to the marketplace. I have achieved this through the unique development of VIA, where I have students completing the penultimate subject of the Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MEI) program (i.e., VIA) working together with Swinburne scientists that have developed cutting edge scientific inventions. This approach ensures that our students receive authentic experiences of developing start-ups, while Swinburne scientists get access to the necessary skills and expertise to translate their inventions into spin-outs and commercial opportunities. Since Semester 2, 2019 when I started to modify the way to teach and deliver VIA, my students have collaborated with some of Swinburne’s most prominent and innovative scientists to launch their start-ups, such as mDetect, NovaSense BioMedical and SensFit Technologies. They have provided support to these scientists, enabling them to go on to successfully raise funding for their start-ups from angel investors, private equity funds, family offices, the Swinburne Accelerator, and government grants for more than A$2.8 million.

Key People


Prof. Keryn Chalmers
Dean
School of Business, Entrepreneurship and Law (SoBLE),  Swinburne University of Technology



Prof. Mile Terziovski
Chair
SoBLE’s Business Technology and Entrepreneurship,  Swinburne University of Technology



Prof. Matthew Cuthbertson
Former Pro-Vice Chancellor
Research Commercialisation,  Swinburne University of Technology



Mark Garkawe
Founder and Director
L39 Capital



Geoff Gourley
Chairman and Founder
Impact Investment Fund



Alice L Wong
Former Manager
Intellectual Property Commercialisation,  Swinburne University of Technology


Acknowledgements

I want to thank the my colleagues who have been very supportive of my initiative:
- Associate Professor Jerome Donovan
- Dr Julian Vieceli
- Dr Cheree Topple
- Mark Feldschuh

Images

mDetect’s ‘space particle’ tailings dam safety device

NovaSense's accessible assistive & therapeutic rehab aid for people with low vision & neurocognitive disorders

Deepa Prabu's NovaSense Biomedical presents CueSleeve

SensFit Technologies' Pressure distribution on Smart Insoles

VIA students class 2022 S1 during showcase

Gimme Buddy team Class 2022 S1

SensFit Tec's at showcase event 2022

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

Tarekegn Chimdi with a doctorate degree in materials engineering from Deakin University (Australia) and Master of Science in Physics from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) arrived in Australia in 2000. While he was a part-time lecturer at Deakin University, he set-up Emerald Home and Community Care, a disability care service provider. In 2021, he enrolled in Swinburne’s Master of Fintech program. For the elective unit, Tarekegn took Venture in Action unit in Semester 1, 2022. This was the first time I met Tarekegn. During the first day of the class, we had discussion about what project he wanted to work with. As he has experienced with the disability people, especially elderly one, he had some idea to develop a product to prevent senior people fall from their bed. During the semester, while he was creating the prototype, I was mentoring him to launch his project. I did assist him to form a team to work on the project. At the end of semester, he presented his project “SRAP – Seniors’ Risk Alert and Prevention” to a group of invited investors. While currently he is negotiating with some interested investors to inject some cash into SRAP, he and his team are working with one medical centre in Melbourne to develop a clinical trial program. This project eventually will be funded soon and the product developed by Tarekegn and his team will save a lot of lives, reduce stress and cut the cost of hospitalisation.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

I had been asked by some people whether entrepreneurship could be taught in the classroom. Obviously, as an entrepreneurship educator, my answer was affirmatively yes. However, when I took over Venture in Action (VIA) unit in Semester 1, 2019, my conviction was a little bit shaken. VIA is penultimate unit of the Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MEI) program at Swinburne University Technology’s Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship. At the end of semester, the invited investors informed me that I should not bother to ask them to attend the pitch for the following semester as the quality of the projects was poor. Since then, I took initiatives to change the way to teach and deliver the VIA. Several lessons I have learnt in the past three years: Do not hesitate to bench marking your class with the best practices in the world; Keep improving the contents of your subject based on the feedback from your students; Read the scholarly literature on the latest development in the pedagogy; Listen to other stakeholders of your class (e.g., scientists, investors, IP lawyers, founders of startups); Take initiatives to reach out to the people who can assist you to improve your class.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

Since winning my school’s Teaching Excellence Award and Swinburne Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award in Higher Education (Individual) in 2021 for my work in creating an Entrepreneurial Startup Ecosystem (ESE) in Venture In Action (VIA) class, I have been working closely with Universitas Andalas, a public university in Padang, Indonesia. I was appointed as an advisor to its Faculty of Economics and Business to develop the entrepreneurship study program, which will be launched in 2024. I have been asked by Universitas Brawijaya, a public university in Malang, Indonesia, to develop and implement ESE for its Directorate of Innovation and Business Incubation. I will be in Malang in late November 2023 to start the program. Furthermore, I have been in discussion with BRIN (National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia) to collaborate working on the development of entrepreneurship program for Indonesian primary and secondary students. And, I am continuing my formal role as Principal Advisor to the National Agency for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Development (NATEC) with the Ministry of Science and Technology, Vietnam. In the last seven years, I have been providing strategic advice and policy development support for initiatives aimed to create, support and maintain the start-up and innovation ecosystem in Vietnam.


KEY STATISTICS

A$2.8 Million

Amount of funding secured by the startups since 2020

51

Number of VIA students in the past 3 years

90%

Average Student Satisfaction Survey score since S2, 2019

12

Number of projects in the class in the past 3 years

8

Number of startups from the projects established since 2020

10

Number of interns worked in scientists’ startups

9

Average number of investors attended investment pitch by students

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