Shift Happens: A 2-Day Practical Workshop for PhDs
🚀 Two days to dream, think, and make plans like an entrepreneurial scientist.
The two-day hands-on workshop has a single goal: to get a taste of business thinking. You'll get to join a team, try out different roles when completing the tasks, and be guided and supported through the process.
In just two days, you will:
Understand how solutions from labs make it into daily use by people outside.
See your research through the eyes of an outsider looking in.
Experience both excitement and dread as you work with a new team in a low-risk, high-energy setting.
Discover that entrepreneurial thinking is not mystical and that it only adds to your academic experience.
🙋♀️ Moderator and facilitator: Liis Narusk, an almost certified coach, to snap you out of your comfort zone.
🙋♀️Academic Turned Entrepreneur: Xann Schwinn
Xann has worked at the intersection of startup tech and the arts for 15 years. She is currently founder of Biiah, a music healthtech platform enabling people to improve their health through singing, and runs Singforce, a workplace choir program bringing singing-for-wellness sessions to companies across the UK. She also co-founded the Cambridge Female Founders Network to bridge the gap for female founders seeking community, strategic support, and funding. And champion queer representation in venture capital as an ambassador for i³ investing.
Xann has 20+ years experience producing large scale events and interactive music installations. She loves finding new, creative ways to bring people together, encouraging greater collaboration, connection and meaning.
Much of Xann's own work has centred on the reconstruction of how we listen to, sing and engage with 16th-century polyphony. She has founded 2 choirs: Concanenda (a scratch chamber group in the UK), and Crepusculum (a choir based at Berklee College of Music).
🙋♂️🙋Confirmed mentors: Mait Müntel and Meelis Lootus
Dr. Mait Müntel earned his PhD in theoretical physics in 2008 working in CERN, where he contributed to the groundbreaking Higgs Boson research at the CMS experiment. This discovery in 2012 paved the way for a Nobel Prize in Physics. Transitioning from science to entrepreneurship, Mait founded Lingvist, a pioneering company dedicated to accelerating language learning through artificial intelligence. In 2019, he co-founded another company Fermi Energia to secure Estonia’s energy independence through the development of a national nuclear power plant. Driven by a passion for innovation in both technology and energy, Mait continues to make significant contributions to science, education, and society.
Meelis Lootus is the Founder and CEO of Tehistark, building a regulatory document generation system for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Previously, he served as Director of AI Engineering at Sharecare (via the acquisition of doc.ai), developing production-grade AI solutions for pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford in computer vision for automation of spinal MRI interpretation, and has ten years of industrial experience applying AI to automate worklfows, mostly in clinical research and quantitative finance. His PhD led to software now licensed to industry, and he subsequently worked on bringing several innovative technologies to market in startups.
📆 Agenda:
🤝 Day 1 - New Perspectives!
07:00 Bus departs from Tallinn (Mere kultuurikeskus)
09:30 Bus departs from Tartu (Vanemuise lower parking area)
10:30–11:00 Arrival to Kood/Võru, gathering and snacks
11:00–11:05 Welcome and introduction
11:05–11:25 Kicking off the 2 days
11:25–12:00 Team formation + finding your workstation
12:00–12:15 Adapted Lean Canvas
12:15–13:45 Work begins
13:45–14:45 Lunch at Stedingu maja + hotel check‑in at Tamula Hotell
14:45–15:25 Fireside chat with Xann Schwinn
15:25–18:45 Work continues
18:45–19:00 Wrapping up + moving to Stedingu maja
19:00–… Dinner and fun
🎤 Day 2 - Present Like a Pro!
…–08:30 Hotel check‑out
08:30–09:00 Gathering to Kood/Võru and snacks
09:00–09:10 Recap of yesterday + introduction to today
09:10–09:20 Short pitching theory
09:20–09:35 Pitch example
09:35–13:45 Work continues
13:45–14:15 Lunch at Stedingu maja
14:15–15:30 Pitch practice
15:30–16:30 Teams finetune their pitches independently
16:30–18:00 Team presentations
18:00–18:15 Announcing the winners, wrap‑up and thank‑yous
18:15–18:30 Snacks and packing
18:30 Leave with new friends and skills + bus ride home
The event is organised by Health Founders Estonia (HFE) and funded by the European Union through Enterprise Estonia.
The project "Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies" (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.