2022: Gearing Up!
As we slowly emerge from the last two years of life with lockdowns, social distancing and no International travel, it is exciting to consider the partnership with BMW Group running on all cylinders! With that in mind, 2022 is going to be a year of significant growth and expansion for the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy across several areas. As we head into 2022, let me give you some insights about the exciting goals and initiatives we have for this coming year.
Academy Transformation
It is with excitement that we officially announce that we are relocating our offices from Gardens Point Campus to Kelvin Grove Campus. This move flags a significant expansion of resources, space and technical capabilities. We have already signed on a new Technical Associate, Mike Lepre, to join the team. Mike brings a wealth of knowledge across technical skills, workplace health and safety and administrative procedures within QUT, his expertise will be invaluable to our development goals. Further, as we move into our new premises at Kelvin Grove we are more than doubling our footprint with two design research spaces to help cater for new equipment and resources. With this expansion comes a new major resource provided by BMW Group to boost our capabilities across all our Programs, helping to achieve current aims and establish far more ambitious future goals that we previously thought. All of these new changes are a signal of the exciting transformation happening this year.
New Cooperative Partnerships
The seeds of our external engagement initiatives in 2021 are starting to bear fruits. We have been expanding our networks in the previous 12 months and this year we hope to announce several high-end partnerships as part of the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy. For example, we continue to expand our partnerships internally with other QUT Faculties, such as Business and Engineering, to provide opportunities for other students beyond design to be able to undertake the Internship Program and potentially travel to BMW Group and idealworks to work as interns in Germany. We are also cultivating another exciting partnership with some extraordinarily talented designers on the development of a new initiative that will focus on tackling visionary ideas for future mobility systems. Our partners are global leaders in their respective fields and will help expand our current capabilities in a new and exciting domain. Additionally we are carefully consolidating a network of global leading companies to support the next phase of the Academy. We will be sure to keep you up to date on these and any other partnerships that we forge in the coming year.
Research Program
After officially launching our Research Program in early 2021 we are really looking forward to further growth of research projects and higher-degree positions 2022. We have established our long-term agenda with three research domains across Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Machine Interface and Design Thinking; each with specific sub-topics. Already we have secured interest from BMW Group employees wanting to conduct PhD research projects with Academy, and we look forward to continuing those conversations with BMW Group colleagues. Further, as mentioned above, we also have a significant technical resource provided by BMW Group that will be utilised to conduct cutting-edge research and help attract high-performing students nationally and internationally. There will be a concerted effort to secure between 2-3 fully-funded PhD scholarship positions in 2022-2023 period to bolster the Research Program now and into the future.
Internship Program
As borders open up we are one again thrilled for the opportunity to be able to send students to BMW Group and ideal works in Germany. The teams we are working with across both BMW Group and idealworks are very enthusiastic for more of our talented students employed in their departments and divisions making a real difference. We are also expanding our internship program at the Academy by continuing to offer various opportunities for students to enhance their design skills and capabitilies through work integrated learning positions, as well as unique project offerings in the Industrial Design degree. With our new research spaces and special technical resources the project options we will have on offer are expanding - with some incredibly exciting and cool projects across industrial design, interaction design and games students.
As you can note from the above we are extremely excited about this coming year. It is encouraging to note that our partnership with BMW Group and idealworks has continued to expand during the previous year in the midst of the challenging global situation. As we emerge out of that fog, we are incredibly enthusiastic and energised for what the future holds. We hope you enjoy the next part of this odyssey with us!
Take care,
Rafael Gomez
Founder and Head of BMW Group + QUT Design Academy