How BIX works

BIX connects Masters’ students with industry partners to conduct behavioural science projects in real-world settings. Projects can be hosted in the private, public and charity sectors with supplemental academic support. This creates novel partnerships that provide significant knowledge exchange opportunities, both in terms of sharing our expertise and through feedback from our partners on the key challenges they face.

How it works

• Industry partners can turn key challenges or opportunities into a Master’s project.
• Industry partners submit an initial idea via the online or  downloadable form.
• Proposals are accepted until the end of August; students are allocated to projects by November.
• Students apply for projects and are matched based on relevant interests and skill sets.
• Industry partners assign an internal mentor to oversee the project.
• The BIX team assigns a UCL academic for additional supervision.
• Project timelines and working arrangements are flexible and agreed upon by the industry mentor, student, and academic.
• At project completion around August / September, partners receive a short presentation or 2–3 page executive summary.
• The project constitutes one third of the student’s overall programme grade.

Note: It can be hard for industry partners to judge how big a project is appropriate for a masters student project. The process of refining your proposal will involve some feedback from academic supervisors, who have a lot of experience of judging this, and they might suggest that you either need to reduce the size of your project, use different methods to achieve the same aim, or split it into multiple student projects (with a £1000 fee per project, but still only one admin fee). 

Costs

BIX projects are cost effective with minimal financial obligations relative to the return values.  This is split into 2 parts:

1. Research Fee – £1000 (per project)

Students use this fee to cover the cost of conducting the research, such as paying participants for testing. It is paid by all industry partners for each project.

2. Project Administration Fee

This fee is based on your organisation type and number of projects:

• Public or third sector: £500 for ONE project
• Public or third sector: £1000 for TWO or more projects
• All other industry partners: £1500 (reduced fee to £1000 for returning partners)

If you submit more than one project in the same academic year, you only pay the admin fee once. If you submit projects in a different academic year, the fee applies again.

Summary of costs (per academic year):

The costs are significantly less than hiring a new employee or a project-based consultant, enabling organisations to explore partnership opportunities and/or get answers to specific questions without advanced budget planning.  Access to cutting-edge scientific knowledge and highly skilled data analysis at these rates is not typically available to the private, public or third sectors.