Postdoctoral researchers are a somewhat forgotten collective in the research system, despite their key role in running research projects and in managing and training junior staff. The goal of this workshop is to address their changing needs as increasingly expert researchers with growing responsibilities and pressures. Participants will gain a renewed perspective of some key transferrable competencies for the postdoctoral research stage and beyond. The over-riding principle of this training is awareness-raising: to develop a conceptual framework to understand and deal with some of the most common challenges that postdocs face, and to acquire a set of practical tools and methods that are immediately applicable in the participants’ working environment.

Target Group: Post-doctoral researchers

Available places: 16

Workshop Conten

• Time and task management

How do you prioritise tasks to get important things done first? Participants will learn intuitive tools to gain efficiency, as well as how to set realistic medium-term goals.

• Motivation

Science can give us many reasons to feel demotivated, with consequences for our work and career progression. We will work with a simple framework for understanding demotivation, both in ourselves and in colleagues we supervise.

• Team Dynamics

Delegation and facilitating supervision

As researchers work on and lead ever-larger projects, we become increasingly responsible for the work of other team members. In this module, we will learn an intuitive model for delegating effectively, and following-up on progress. We also discuss a model to facilitate supervision of others.

• Review of core communication skills

Communication is the key to everything we do as researchers, whether it’s transmitting our science or managing our colleagues. Therefore, interpersonal communication will be a recurring thread throughout the workshop. We will discuss e.g. how to give and receive feedback.

Training Methods

This is an interactive workshop with extensive elements of partner work, exercises, group discussion. We use innovative training methods and proven didactic techniques, and place special emphasis on sharing and learning from the participants’ own expertise and experience. To increase impact and applicability, we work with real-life cases from the participants whenever possible. We may ask participants to reserve time for individual preparatory work before the workshop.

Trainers

Dr Gavin Lucas, PhD is a scientist with 13 years of experience in biomedical research, and founder of TPM Science, where he has been an author’s editor, consultant, and trainer since 2013. In addition to his own track-record as a publishing scientist on national, European an international research projects, he and his team at TPM Science have helped plan, critique, and polish over 700 original scientific articles for dozens of institutes in diverse fields, as well as more than 120 H2020 and Horizon Europe proposals. He also has extensive experience as a trainer on more than 300 workshops in transferable skills for researchers, and provides consultancy on training and scientific productivity at numerous research institutes, public agencies, charitable foundations, and private companies.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinlucas

Dr Lisa Saemisch, PhD is a physicist by training, with a PhD in nanophotonics, and over 7 years of experience as a researcher. Her work has been published in several high-impact journals and she has presented at more than 10 international conferences, always eager to explain sophisticated scientific concepts in a very simple way. She has extensive experience in teaching students and has developed a passion for helping her fellow scientists improve the content and delivery of their presentations, their paper-reading skills and consulting them about what the future holds for a scientist.