"Impact" for Fellowship application

Question

I'm a telecom professional with 10yrs experience in research and innovation. I find the term "impact" in the FIET criteria to be vague and conflict with "sustained high achievements" in my scenario. 
 For example, I frequently work as collaborative research project leads with both academia and industry. These projects tend to focus on fleshing out technologies still in early or even conceptual stages. Naturally it will take a long time for commercial products based on them to appear in the market and "impact the world". The application FAQs also mention the achievements have to be made in the last 10 years. 
 How does this even work? What is being measured against "5 years of sustained achievements"? For example, is "5 years of recent collaborative research project leadership with no immediate commercial impact" a weaker case than, say, "a new product launched last year was based on the research project outputs I led 12 years ago"? 
 Thanks for your time reading this lengthy post. I'd appreciate if any Fellows can give some insights about "impact" and "sustained achievements".

Andy Millar · Accepted Answer

Hi Yishi, 
 To be honest I'd suggest you're best talking to a Fellowship Advisor who can discuss it confidentially in context of your specific application. There's no "hard" criteria, because every case is different. 
 https://pra.theiet.org/search-advisor 
 But in general terms, remember it's about impact on the industry or wider society: what was the effect of your work on others? Why is the world now slightly different because of what you did? It doesn't have to be commercial impact, it could be research that in the future could allow others to make a commercial impact - or even non-commercial, e.g. saving lives or protecting the environment. 
 The "5 years in the last 10 years" is (maybe except for very exceptional cases) strict, it is about "are you having an impact today". But of course this will build on past history, and applications may (briefly) mention significant achievements in the past. So in response to your example (if I'm reading it right), generally referring to something you did 12 years ago which had an impact today isn't what's being looked for, if it's really significant it might work but definitely best to fit into the "5 years in the last 10" if you can. 
 The point of the sustained contribution, as I understand it, is to avoid recognising people who happened to be in the right place at the right time once in their careers, so it's on the assumption that people who can show sustained contribution to the world of engineering should be able to show that in their recent history. But hopefully my point above about this not needing to be commercial impact should make that clearer how to show that. 
 Is there a scenario where you could walk into a room and people would say "Here's Yishi, they're the person who made this happen..." or "Here's Yishi, they're the expert in this field..."? It doesn't have to be a world beating thing, it might be in a very narrow field, but it's something where you're recognised as the one who made it happen - and continued to do so over a period of time. 
 Hope that helps, but do speak to an advisor. (Ok, I am a fellowship advisor, I mean speak privately to one...) 
 Thanks, 
 Andy

"Impact" for Fellowship application

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