Future Leaders Graduate Programme

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Salary£24,501-£27,000Additional salary info£26,000 ContractFixed termWorking hoursFull-timeClosing date02/12/2013 LocationEast of England, Greater London, Glasgow, Stirling and West Central Scotland, West Midlands, North East England, North West England, South West England, South East England, Yorkshire and the HumberFull location detailsBasingstoke, Birmingham, Bolton, Bristol, Cobham, Glasgow, Ipswich, Leeds, London, Lytham, Manchester, Morecambe, Reading, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Teesside, Tonbridge

We can never claim to know exactly what tomorrow will bring, but we like to think we’ve a better idea than most. It’s our business, after all. Now, if there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s this: technology and its creative and effective use will be central to our continued commercial success. And leading this technological charge? Graduates on our flagship two-year Future Leaders Graduate Programme.

Whichever area of our business you go into – AXA Wealth, AXA Commercial Lines and Personal Intermediary, AXA Direct and Partnerships, or AXA PPP healthcare – you’ll help to develop innovative strategies that really put the customer at the heart of what we do. In each of your three eight-month placements, you’ll get involved in challenging, stretching work, in a supportive and stimulating environment. Through on-the-job learning and by working closely with experienced colleagues, through workshops, webinars, online learning tools, even business games, you’ll build your capabilities, skills and knowledge, from how you work with others, to leading people, to strategic thinking. In other words, everything you need to be a Future Leader of AXA.

We want creative thinkers. Graduate who are relentlessly curious. You’ll need to be digitally savvy too, with a good grasp on technology and a solid understanding of all things social media. You’re detail conscious and doggedly tenacious, stopping at nothing to get the job done and done well. And while you’re adaptable and ambitious, you’ve the ability to focus on the job in hand. And you love a challenge. Which means that obstacles don’t stay obstacles for long. And responsibility? Bring it on. We’d like you to have a 2:1 degree (or above) in any discipline.

First things first. We’re big. Impressively and successfully big. We’re the world’s number one insurance brand, with some 102 million customers and 166,000 people globally. But big doesn’t mean impersonal or distant. Not in our world anyway. And big, we believe, isn’t necessarily best when it comes to graduate programmes. So we keep the numbers on our graduate programmes small. By keeping them small, you get real work and real responsibility, personal attention and undivided support, tailored development and ready access to senior leaders. What’s more, your ideas will be heard, your creativity will be seen, and you’ll have the chance to add your colour to our incredible business.

2:1 degree (in any discipline/subject)

Any

To find out more about AXA and our Future Leaders Graduate Programme, and to apply, head to the Apply button.

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Obama Praises Future Scientists at White House Science Fair

Projects range from a new cancer test to a bicycle-powered water purifier

By Pat Wingert

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The President rides a bike-powered water filtration system at the White House Science Fair. Image: White House Blog/Becky Fried

WASHINGTON—With the third annual White House Science Fair as his backdrop, Pres. Barack Obama announced plans Monday to recruit one million new science, technology, engineering and math mentors from the private and public sectors to inspire many more students to pursue advanced educations and careers in those fields.

Saying he is taking an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, Obama said that in addition to recruiting an “army of new teachers in these subject areas,” the country needs “to give the millions of Americans who work in science and technology not only the kind of respect they deserve but also new ways to engage young people.”

The administration said it hopes to make the new mentoring initiative, part of the White House’s Educate to Innovate campaign, as common among STEM professions as pro bono work is among legal firms. Ten education nonprofits and major technology companies, including SanDisk, Cognizant and Cisco Systems, have committed to become the founding members of a multiyear mentoring effort called US2020 that aims for 20 percent of each company’s workforce to commit to 20 hours a year to mentoring work by the year 2020. The 10 founding companies also pledged to provide more than $2 million in private money to fund the program’s launch.

Before announcing the new mentoring initiatives, Obama went booth to booth through the science fair, staged inside the White House as well as in the sunny but windy Jacqueline Kennedy Garden on the South Lawn. The student exhibits featured the innovative work of about 100 winners of national and regional science, technology, engineering and math competitions held throughout the country. Many of the projects were completed with the help of mentors and after-school programs offered by schools.

Students, ranging in age from eight to 19, showed off projects that included a cost-efficient method of transforming algae into biofuel by 2013 Intel Science Talent Search winner Sara Volz, 17, of Colorado Springs, Colo., as well as 16-year-old Jack Andraka’s breakthrough pancreatic cancer test that he developed after identifying a key protein, mesothelin, produced by pancreatic tumors. The discovery won Andraka, of Crownsville, Md., first place in the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

During his speech Obama mentioned that Andraka repeatedly requested space from research labs to pursue his experiments but was turned down nearly 200 times. “Finally, with the help of some folks at Johns Hopkins, he got the research facilities that he needed, developed a pancreatic cancer test that is faster, cheaper and more sensitive than the test that came before it—which is not bad for a guy who is just barely old enough to drive.”

Noting that Monday was also the 43rd Earth Day, Obama gave “a special shout-out to all of the young people...who focused their attention on how to harness cleaner forms of energy and how to create more energy efficiency.” These inventions included a wind turbine small enough to mount on a roof, a bicycle-powered water decontamination system capable of filtering out Escherichia coli and other dangerous pathogens from contaminated water, and an inexpensive press capable of transforming biomass waste (like banana peels and peanut shells) into compressed cooking fuel to combat deforestation—the latter, a winner of the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge.

Kiona Elliott, 18, of Oakland Park, Fla., said her group’s pedal-power project was inspired by a fellow student who told them about the water contamination crisis she saw as a volunteer in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. “We live in Florida and we have hurricanes here all the time,” Elliott said. Because big storms are often accompanied by power outages, they decided their system should be powered manually.

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NASA Views Landing Site through Eyes of Future Moon Crew

This movie is a simulation of the amount of solar illumination in the south polar region of moon over a solar day generated using high resolution topography.
+ Play animation (Quicktime - 1.6Mb) February 27, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has obtained the highest resolution terrain mapping to date of the moon's rugged south polar region, with a resolution to 20 meters (66 feet) per pixel. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., collected the data using the Deep Space Network's Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California's Mojave Desert. The imagery generated by the data has been incorporated into animation depicting the descent to the lunar surface of a future human lunar lander and a flyover of Shackleton Crater.

The mapping data collected indicate that the region of the moon's south pole near Shackleton Crater is much more rugged than previously understood. The Shackleton rim area is considered a candidate landing site for a future human mission to the moon.

"The south pole of the moon certainly would be a beautiful place to explore," said Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "We now know the south pole has peaks as high as Mt. McKinley and crater floors two and a half times deeper than the Grand Canyon. There are challenges that come with such rugged terrain, and these data will be an invaluable tool for advance planning of lunar missions."

Three times during a six-month period in 2006, scientists targeted the moon's south polar region using Goldstone's 70-meter (230-foot) radar dish. The antenna, three-quarters the size of a football field, sent a 500-kilowatt-strong, 90-minute-long radar stream 373,046 kilometers (231,800 miles) to the moon. The radar bounced off the rough-hewn lunar terrain over an area measuring about 644 kilometers by 402 kilometers (400 miles by 250 miles). Signals were reflected back to two of Goldstone's 34-meter (112-foot) antennas on Earth. The roundtrip time, from the antenna to the moon and back, was about two-and-a-half seconds.

"I have not been to the moon, but this imagery is the next best thing," said Scott Hensley, a scientist at JPL and lead investigator for the study. "With these data we can see terrain features as small as a house without even leaving the office."

Previously, the best topographic resolution of the moon's south pole was generated in 1997 by a team lead by Cornell University scientist Jean-Luc Margot also using Goldstone. Margot's team produced topographic maps of the lunar south pole with spatial resolution of 150 meters (490 feet) and a vertical accuracy of 50 meters (165 feet). The new resolution generated by JPL provides more than three times finer spatial resolution and 10 times finer vertical accuracy than the 1997 data.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will provide the next generation of lunar imaging and data. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in late 2008. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera will retrieve high-resolution images of the moon's surface and lunar poles with resolutions to 1 meter (3.3 feet). These images will provide knowledge of polar illumination conditions, identify potential resources and hazards, and enable safe landing site selection. Other instruments aboard the orbiter will return data such as temperature maps, ultraviolet images, characterization of radiation on the moon and a high-resolution 3-D map. NASA's quest for up-to-date imagery of the moon also will benefit from international missions such as Japan's Selene robotic probe.

Funding for the program was provided by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

To view animation, terrain maps of the moon's south pole and images from this story, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html .

Video animation developed from the high-resolution imaging also will air on NASA Television. For NASA TV downlink and schedule information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

JPL manages the Goldstone Solar System Radar and the Deep Space Network for NASA. To learn more about them, visit: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn .

For information about NASA's exploration program to return humans to the moon, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration .

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Stephanie Schierholz/Beth Dickey 202-358-4997/2087
NASA Headquarters, Washington
stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov, beth.dickey-1@nasa.gov

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