Alumna Kosette Lambert and her partner Mark Fusco have had a long association with Flinders through their company, Advanced Focus. This year the inaugural recipient of the Advanced Focus Scholarship in Engineering was awarded to Reid Honan, demonstrating their shared commitment to education and desire to give back into the local community.

Over the past 10 years Mark, Kosette and their team at Advanced Focus have taken up a range of opportunities with Flinders University to build the link between students and universities, and industry.

Advanced Focus (formerly Manufacturing Focus) was a founding partner of the Medical Device Partnering Program at Flinders University and these close ties continue today. Mark has delivered guest lectures on Design for Manufacture to engineering students, whilst Kosette has been a mentor for the Connect@Flinders program and participated as an Advisory Board Member for the Flinders Enterprise Consulting program.

The focus on engineering relates to the importance of these technical skills to our future economy and the importance of a skilled regional community that creates higher value industries.

On a deeper personal level, both from rural background, Mark and Kosette understand the challenges that young people face in making the leap from high school to the next stage in their lives. They appreciate the additional sacrifices that families make to support students living away from home. This scholarship aims to alleviate some of those pressures, to support others in making that transition and to provide the best opportunity to thrive in their chosen engineering degree.

They say “we feel lucky that we are in a position that we can make this contribution on behalf of our entire team at Advanced Focus and indeed see it as one of our responsibilities.”