SCI PhD student Abdulrahim Sajini is taking part in the Judge Business School’s Accelerate Cambridge entrepreneurship programme to develop his idea for Kandlelit, a visual search engine for researchers.
Accelerate Cambridge helps Cambridge researchers develop their ideas through an intensive programme of mentoring and training. The scheme puts participants in contact with people and organisations that can help take the idea from concept to execution, and helps them learn how to navigate the business world.
Abdul says “Kandlelit is a tool that cuts down the time you spend on scientific search and can highlight biological relationships between articles that you might not otherwise see. It guides you towards the papers you might want to read, and gives you new research ideas. Kandlelit uses knowledge graphs to identify connections between publications and presents these relationships in an easy-to-navigate visual interface."
“Being in the scheme has really helped us take Kandlelit further. Accelerate Cambridge has made us think more about customer development, who will be using the service, and how to evolve it into a marketable product. We have also been coached on how to pitch to investors – what they expect to see, and how to put yourself in their place.”
“It has been a great experience so far and we are looking forward to seeing what we can do with everything we have learned,” he continues. “We have already had initial contact with publishing groups and industry, although we are still at the prototype stage right now.”
Abdul is a strong advocate for entrepreneurship in the scientific community, and would encourage anyone at SCI who thinks they have a novel idea to see how far they can take it. Abdul says “Developing Kandlelit has been a great challenge and my group leader has been very supportive. I would advise anyone at SCI with an idea like this to just go for it - it has been really rewarding to see it starting to grow from a concept into something real.”