Just back from mentoring at the Environment YES and Biotechnology YES event in Edinburgh. This is a boot camp for teams of post-graduates who put themselves in the roles of new company management and go into a Dragons Den to ask the judges for investment. It is intense and fun (for the most part). As a mentor for the marketing and sales aspects I get to be very irritating and I ask the students not to tell me about the technologies (which they have thought about for about 3 months at this stage) and instead to show me where the money is. This years crop have been very tolerant and for the most part have grasped the concept well. Good luck to them in their presentations this morning.

I am very proud to announce a collaboration with MTT in Finland to work on a Market Research project for TEKES. We will be working with Dr Anna-Marja Hoffren to prepare a report into the cross-pollination of Bioinformatics skills with other industry areas including IT, Food and Drink, Environment and Forestry. And from a personal point of view I get the benefit of going back to Finland to work with old friends!