Mentor And Advisor

Summary

Join Convergent Research as a Mentor & Advisor for a part-time, 7-month role (10-20 hours/week). You will play a crucial part in incubating and launching the first UK-based Focused Research Organizations (FROs) through a 6-month residency program. As a mentor, you will provide coaching and support to participating teams, collaborate on program delivery, and assist with proposal refinement and pitching. This role requires experience in deep tech startups, scientific research, and leading high-performance teams. The ideal candidate possesses deep technical knowledge, founder empathy, and an extensive network within the scientific research community.

Requirements

• Be a former founder, CEO or executive at a deep tech startup, science institute or major research initiative or be an experienced funder of and advisor to these types of projects
• Have a deep understanding of and ability to move coordinated research projects from ideation to launch to scale
• Have deep technical knowledge in a scientific or engineering field - or can understand and work with deep technical concepts
• Have experience leading high performance technical teams and successfully building products for scientists, including tools and datasets
• Have high founder empathy and good people intuition
• Have an extensive network across academic, for profit and non profit scientific research, with the ability to connect founders to the resources they need
• Be focused on maximizing impact over profit, have debated the merits of venture capital as a funding mechanism for early stage hardtech and be familiar with and supportive of a broad range of models for bringing technology to market

Responsibilities

• Be the key source of mentorship to participants during the 6 month residency, meeting 1:1 with teams weekly and staying in close contact throughout to ensure they are deeply supported with the coaching, resources, and introductions they need
• Collaborate with Convergent Research’s Head of Programs to refine and deliver programming to train participants in proposing and launching a FRO, including workshops, group working sessions and lab meetings, and community dinners
• Work with every team to help refine and pitch their FRO proposal (both technically and operationally), connecting them to resources and contacts as needed. This includes working with the FRO Residency Program Manager to support participants in organizing their roadmapping workshops, coordinating a peer review process with a panel of scientific experts, and preparing for pitch day