2024 REVVING IT UP!
It is difficult to fathom that we are now in our fourth year of such an incredible and unique partnership with the worlds leading premium automotive manufacturer - BMW Group. We continue to succeed with our projects, our internship program and our incredible research projects. Beyond this, we are excited to see our partnership across the BMW Group grow to new departments and to other parts of the world. Our network has truly become global. As we push ahead, we are excited to rev-up the year to come!
Academy Expansion
2024 will be a year of growth for the Academy. Already, by the end of January, we have promoted all of our ongoing designers as well as extended another part-time position. Jordan Domjahn has been promoted from Design Associate to Senior Design Associate. Epi Pereira and Tim Lim have been promoted from Junior Design Associates to Design Associates. Furthremore, Taharah Ali, our most recent team member, has had her contract extended as Communications Associate. Congratulations to the entire team, they are a dedicated, talented, and committed group who are central in helping the Academy succeed! Beyond this, we have now grown from one Masters student to four active PhD students based at the Beta Lab, with two PhD students based outside of the Academy space but connected to our research agenda. It’s exciting to feel the energy at Alpha Studio and Beta Lab seeing it grow from 3 staff members to 8 designers and design researchers working on a variety of projects This expansion is a significant indicator of the strength of the partnership between QUT and BMW Group and we can’t wait to reveal all of our impressive work.
Internship Program
Once again, we are sending a large cohort of design students to various parts of Europe as part of our BMW Group Internship Program. We have already confirmed 7 students as paid interns at BMW Group and idealworks in Munich and the UK. This includes Darcy Duckworth and Grace Taylor going to TechOffice in Munich; Ryan Chappell, Noah Broeckx, and Dillon Holmes heading to Logistics and Robotics team in Munich; Killian Frunz starting at idealworks in Munich; and Stephen Terry, launching his internship at Hams Hall in the UK in a few months time. We are also excited to potentially announce a new set of interns at another division of BMW Group in Germany in the coming months. Of course, we are also excited for our BMW Group WIL Program launching across 2024 once again. Each semester this year we will offer 4 WIL spots to current design students to work at the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy with the amazing team. We are offering some exciting projects through our Academy WIL Program at QUT, as well as some majorly awesome projects for students in Industrial Design and Games Design capstone. We can’t wait to report on these as the year progresses!
Research Program
As mentioned in our intro, our Research Program is growing substantially this year. We have now officially launched 4 new PhD projects, with a number of other PhDs connected to our Academy agenda. Our new PhDs include Gustavo Bonet, who is studying Advances in Human-Machine Vehicle Interfaces Utilising Emerging Technologies; Alexandra Singleton, focusing on Exploring Unconscious Cognition of Industrial Designers in Multinational Corporations; A BMW Case Study; Jesse Goddard, exploring Automotive Materials and their Impact on User Experience and Perceptions; and Toto Ma, researching Experience-Oriented Tangible Automotive User-Interfaces with Smart Materials. We also have a number of significant announcements in relation to our broader Mobility and Transport research agenda at QUT that are being led by Assoc Prof Rafael Gomez, which will help connect the research conducted by the Academy across the broader research ecosystem at QUT.
Special Projects
We have already confirmed two awesome advanced cutting-edge projects with BMW Group that our Design Associates will be working on. As always, we are incredibly proud of the trust that a company of this calibre has in our team, as these projects are central to the future development and growth of BMW Group at a global level. These projects involve BMW Group working alongside some of the world’s biggest names in technology, including NVIDIA and Microsoft. Beyond this we are in discussion for a multitude of other stimulating projects with various divisions across BMW Group. We’re excited to announce these once we are able to showcase the outcomes and highlight the ways in which they are helping BMW Group stay at the forefront of advanced design and manufacturing. Don’t forget you can check out some of the previous projects our Design Associates have been involved in over the past year on our website with regularly updated content. As we begin 2024, it is clear that the partnership between BMW Group and QUT continues to strengthen. The biggest indicator this year is the expansion of our team members, which has almost doubled in number in just a few months. Furthermore, all of our programs (Internships, Research and Special Projects) continue to increase in significance, while our other initiatives and external engagements help us connect with other researchers, industry, and the broader design community. This year, we are also focusing more on connecting with the young student cohort that is interested in the design and technology fields. We can’t help being proud of our success with this incredible partnership with BMW Group and idealworks and we look forward to 2024 with incredible anticipation and enthusiasm. For now, make sure you stay connected with us on Instagram, website, newsletters, blog posts, and publications to keep up with the latest from the team!
Rafael Gomez
Founder and Head of BMW Group + QUT Design Academy