Advanced Researcher Career Skills Workshop
The transition to permanent employment from postgraduate research is a challenging prospect in an ever more competitive job market. The European networks oPAC and LA3NET, both coordinated by the QUASAR Group from the Cockcroft Institute, have held a joint 4-day Advanced Researcher Career Skills Workshop in the CPD training suite on the main campus for the networks’ 42 Fellows last week.
The workshop provided dedicated and practical support for a cohort of highly-skilled researchers to help them in their future careers.
Photograph of the oPAC and LA3NET Fellows with Prof. Carsten P. Welsch and members of his EU Project TEAM.
External and internal trainers provided an extremely broad training throughout the week. This included support in career planning by providing practical and specific advice on CV writing and interview skills, writing competitive grant applications and science communication and networking. The university’s business gateway team and Dr. Marco Palumbo, IPS Fellow in the physics department, contributed dedicated sessions on intellectual property rights, commercialisation and entrepreneurship that were very positively received by the course participants.
Prof. Carsten P. Welsch who directed the overall training and who is coordinating both networks said: “The workshop provided an excellent environment to discuss effective strategies for communicating research achievements, to develop skills that prove useful in job interviews and create awareness of the wider societal impact of research, including commercialisation. We have received excellent feedback from the course participants and are convinced that this will help them in their next career moves.”
Following the success of this event, a similar course will be provided by Prof. Welsch, PGR development, Dr. Palumbo and business gateway to final year PGR students from the University of Liverpool’s School of Physical Sciences in mid July.
The projects have received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 289485 (oPAC) and 289191 (LA3NET).
Marie Curie International Training Networks aim to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. This will be achieved through a trans-national networking mechanism, aimed at structuring the existing high quality initial research training capacity throughout Member States and associated countries. In particular, they aim to add to the employability of the recruited researchers through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. Grants are awarded through a highly competitive process.