Departmental news

Two doctoral training programmes led and supported by the University of Warwick are to receive fresh funding from UK Research and Innovation:

• Midlands Integrative Bioscience Training Partnership (MIBTP)
• Central England NERC Training Alliance (CENTA)

The investments in both programmes are part of a £500 million investment package announced by UKRI to support doctoral students to develop their skills and experience across the biological and environmental sciences at their respective institutions.

Press Release (9 December 2024)

We have caught up with Lis Prager, Warwick Economics alumna and Fintech entrepreneur to get an update on how her mission to close the gender wealth gap was progressing. Back in 2023 we found out from Elisabeth how and why she and her business partner and friend Nitika (also Warwick alumna) were trying to set up a personal finance solution combining education, guidance and access to advice.

Back in June 2023 you told us that the gender investment gap was huge, with high-earning women losing out on almost £800K over their career by not investing (Ellevest 2018). How are you trying to solve this problem?

"You’re right – the investment gap is big, and the gender wealth gap is even bigger! Women, despite having ever-more money and assets, face a variety of challenges when it comes to building wealth. What is building wealth? Simply said, it’s growing your money to achieve the life you dream of. What does that take – it takes knowing what you want to achieve, having a plan to achieve it and then getting the education, guidance and accountability to make it happen.

Women specifically lack access to relevant financial plans, solid and accessible education and relatable and timely guidance. We’re time poor, don’t have sufficient financial education and don’t see ourselves in the advisors who say they’ll manage our money. Consequently, we feel disempowered when it comes to our money and don’t do anything… Aila is addressing this by putting a digital personal trainer for your finances in every woman’s pocket, so she can invest, save and budget to achieve the life she dreams of."

"Like a sports personal trainer, who helps you understand your current level of fitness and then crafts a personalised plan, educates you and holds you to account to help you achieve your fitness goal, Aila does the same with money."

According to Nordic Fintech Magazine Aila Money is listed as one of the fintech company to watch! Described as one of those companies that push boundaries, transform industries, and shaking up the status quo with their creative energy.

As a co-founder of Aila Money what boundaries are you pushing and what are you trying to transform?

"We are really trying to push the boundaries on how to empower women to build their wealth. We’re democratising financial planning and guidance for women. As mentioned, we anchor all the plans, education and guidance in the users’ life goals and their data. This personalisation of education and guidance makes finance relevant to women and helps them change their money behaviours in a sustained way. This was demonstrated by users on our no-code beta version saving on average hundreds of pounds, 90% feeling more confident about their money and, the average user starting to invest over £1500 per year."

What have you been focusing on in the last 18 months?

"As a founder you wear all hats – from strategic, to operational – from thinking through business models, to crafting the financial models, to crafting brand and marketing plans, to executing the post or editing the video, to creating the product prototype, to hiring the team and managing the team that will build it. That being said, two focal areas emerge:

• Creating a truly user-centric product – we built and tested a no-code version of Aila and grew the number of users to over 200. This gave us great insights and a good understanding of our engaged user, to allow us to build the Aila app.
• Building a community – we’ve been trying and testing different messages, tools and formats to understand and build a community around Aila. This has given us a great insight again into who we serve and what their thoughts and challenges are when it comes to growing their wealth."

Tell us about Aila Money App. What does it do and why should it appeal to women in particular?

"Aila helps you calculate the cost of your life goals, then – based on where you are today – helps you plan how to achieve them, sets and tracks actions so you complete them. Aila also educates you based on your goals and data and embeds behavioural science to make sure you stay motivated along the way. And yes, we also recognise that sometimes a digital solution isn’t enough, so Aila has a marketplace of human experts (coaches and advisors) to help.

If that sounds abstract, take a moment to think of the life you want to lead – you might want to buy a house, get married, start a family and maybe one day start a business or go on a travel break. Each of these things will cost you something, but rarely does someone calculate that total (and often scary) number of your dreams. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, it’s hard to put in place a plan and even harder to achieve it."

Does Aila utilise anything you learned at Warwick?

"Aila does embed things I learned at Warwick; ranging from topics like inflation, compounding and interest rates which were covered in stats, to more intangible ones like helping people understand their beliefs around money (which we I remember covering in part of the history of economics)."

Have you fully embraced AI solutions within the App?

"We’ve begun embedding aspects of AI into Aila. We have ambitious plans and are already working with some researchers to understand how people want their financial guidance and advice delivered by an AI. It’s super interesting – we’re learning things every day!"

What are your goals for 2025 and beyond?

"We launch the Aila app in January 2025 and are really focusing on traction and engagement – we want to create a product that not only solves the wealth gap but truly empowers women when it comes to their money. We’ll also be starting a pre-seed fundraise so we can continue to develop the product and start embedding the machine learning and AI that can personalise things even more!

Join our journey – download the Aila app today and follow us on socials to see what we’re up to!"

We wish Lis and her business partner Nitika lots of success with the Aila app launch.

Related content

• Aila App is available (for Apple and Androids) from Aila website.
• Previous article: From Warwick Economics graduate to FinTech entrepreneur: Interview with alumna Elisabeth Prager

BBC News have published an article on the restoration of a historic Venetian record featuring History's Professor Luca Mola.

Prof Mola, who rediscovered the document, said it was a "unique window into the active trade routes that brought east and west together" between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Read the article in full.

Head of Department, Professor Tim Lockley MBE, features in a Times article about the discovery of three complete and two partial copies of Alistair Cooke’s famous ‘Letter from America’ series, dating from the late 1940s and the early 1950s, which were missing from the BBC archives.

Read the article in full here.

Prof Lockley has also been interviewed by Vic Minnett of BBC CWR for their feature ‘Vicapedia’ discussing why cricketers wear white jumpers.

Listen again on BBC Sounds from 2:40.

A leading UK study aiming to improve outcomes for patients with potentially life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) has successfully completed recruitment at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust.

A PhD student from WMG at the University of Warwick, has been honoured at the International Rubber Conference Organisation (IRCO) RubberCon 2024.

The IRCO RubberCon, an annual event organised by a careful selection of rubber societies, gathers industry leaders and experts for insightful discussions. This year’s conference, held in Kerala, India, focused on the theme, “Sustainable Development in the Rubber Industry: Challenges and Opportunities.”

Ajitha Achuthanunni, who is based in WMG’s International Institute of Nanocomposite Manufacturing (IINM), received the Best Presentation Award for her groundbreaking research on composites of 2D materials and rubber blends.

Italian higher education leader Professor Giovanna Iannantuoni visited Warwick University and the Department of Economics last month as part of her mission to deepen international relationships in the HE sector.

Professor Iannantuoni is an economist, Rector of the University of Milano-Bicocca, and the first woman President of the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities. In the Italian system a Rector is similar to a UK Vice-Chancellor, with responsibility for academic and financial leadership. It is an elected position with a six-year term.

In addition to meetings with Warwick University Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart Croft and members of Warwick’s senior leadership team, Professor Iannantuoni delivered a guest lecture focusing on her observations of the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian university system, and opportunities for international collaboration in teaching, learning and research.

Having travelled widely herself as a student and academic, Professor Iannantuoni is a strong advocate of working across borders, saying:

“internationalization improves the quality of teaching, research and service to society, helps ensure people have adequate skills for a rapidly evolving and interconnected world, but above all, it means a future of peace and coexistence between different cultures and societies.”

Professor Iannantuoni also outlined some of the ways the Italian HE sector is contributing to national recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.

The Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan is a 10 billion euro programme investing heavily in higher education and research as a means to promote economic growth through innovation.

The University of Milano-Bicocca is one of the 11 Innovation Ecosystems created under the Plan, to address territorial research and innovation challenges, focusing on urban regeneration. The Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action (MUSA) project has turned the university campus and its neighbourhood into a kind of living laboratory where academics, commuters and residents come together to test technical and social innovations in real time.

The lecture was part of an occasional series co-ordinated by the Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre (QAPEC).

Professor Francesco Squintani introduced Professor Iannantuoni and chaired the event.

• Listen to a short interview with Professor Iannantuoni exploring some of the themes of her talk.

Master's student Ellie Cameron is one of four individuals across the UK who were selected to receive a postgraduate agricultural bursary for NFU Mutual’s 2024 Centenary Award. The award will support Ellie in her MSc in Food Security.

The Centenary Award was launched by rural insurer NFU Mutual to celebrate its 100^th anniversary in 2010; to support agricultural leaders of the future, and champion research and innovation within the industry. It provides annual bursaries to pay up to 75% of course fees for selected postgraduate students in agriculture. To select the award recipients, the judging panel looked for applicants who are not only excellent academic performers, but also have a real passion for UK agriculture and demonstrate potential to become a future industry leader.

NFU Mutual Press Release (December 2024).

For the last few months Warwick Medical School students have been offering health checks to staff, students and members of the community from their base at the University of Warwick Sports Centre. This includes height, weight, blood sugar and blood pressure checks. 200 service users have passed through the doors of 11 clinics.

An image representing the work of Dr Nicole Robb et al made the cover of Biophysical Reports!
Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window