Mentor Training helps client win research funding

Ground-breaking university research wins funding following media course

The University of Sheffield has thanked Mentor Media Training for enabling one of its leading Research Fellows to win vital international funding for her engineering project.

Dr Claire Corkhill, pictured, took part in one of Mentor's advanced media skills courses last summer, after realizing that media engagement was a valuable additional part of her work.

Despite initially being wary of the challenges posed by appearing in the mainstream media, Dr Corkhill was put at ease by the Mentor trainers, who coached her in focussing on the opportunities, rather than feeling governed by the risks.

Taking a more confident approach in proactively engaging with the media, Claire set about talking up her work via the BBC science new website pages, The Guardian and BBC Radio.

The media coverage resulted in potential partners contacting Dr Corkhill to offer funding. Her team had created a special type of cement to encase radioactive nuclear material. These new funding not otherwise having knowledge of the university's work, without the media coverage.

See what Dr Claire Corkhill had to say about our training and her remarkable media results;

Article Author: Dave Mason

Dave is Mentor Media Training's Managing Director. He is a CIPR Accredited Practitioner and regularly trains for the PR industry institute. His extensive career in broadcasting spans 30 years across radio and television. He has coached executives from major public and private sector organisations, as well as the UK Armed Forces/NATO, around the world for the past decade. Dave is respected for his inspiring training, which is supportive and concentrates on fast learning development. A founding presenter and shareholder of Somerset’s Orchard FM, he went on to work extensively in commercial radio around the UK, as well as BBC News, where he was a Correspondent at BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 1 Newsbeat. Dave has been a TV presenter, reporter and producer at ITN, GMTV, (ITV Breakfast), ITV News Westcountry and HTV West. He was one of GMTV’s senior producers for a decade, covering major international, domestic, political and entertainment stories. His roles have included senior news producing and planning, undercover investigations, war reporting and features production. Dave still broadcasts as a crisis communications pundit on Talk TV / Radio, BBC Radio and is a visiting lecturer at several universities. He is a non-executive Trustee of community station Radio Bath and the author of 'Handling the Media In Good Times & Bad'.