Managing your Research Career - useful videos

On the University Affairs website (a Canadian site) there is a set of videos in which Jo Van Every, a PhD in sociology from the University of Essex and former program officer with the Standard Research Grants program at SSHRC, gives tips on prioritizing research tasks, planning a long-term program of research, developing a publication strategy, building a support network for research, and carving out time to do research in a busy, multi-focused position.

Junk the Jargon - The Final!

The final of the Junk the Jargon competition was last Wednesday, 27th Jan (apologies for the delay in posting this!), and I was really pleased with how well the whole event went. The ten finalists, who had three minutes each to entertain the audience by talking about their research, all did an amazing job, and on top of that we had a packed and appreciative audience, a panel of very experienced expert judges and generally a great atmosphere.



The winner was Claire Sarell from the School of Biological & Chemical Sciences, who entertained the audience with her talk "What causes Alzheimer's disease?". Runners-up were Katie Lidster, who used cuddly mouse models to illustrate her presentation on "How do mice with green eyes contribute to MS research?", and Rebecca Burgell who also used very inventive props in her delightfully titled talk "CODE BROWN/CODE RED!!! Causes of constipation".

More information about the event can be found on the QM news site, and a video of the event can be seen here.

Events coming up at the British Library

I have posted before about the Postgraduate Training Days that the British Library run, but I just wanted to draw your attention to two that are coming up at the beginning of February.

1st Feb: English (19th Century - Present Day)

9th Feb: History (Medieval - 18th Century)

If your research is in either of these areas you can attend these days for free. The aims of them are:


* To introduce you to the range of research materials available in the British Library
*To offer special curator sessions and workshops in a range of topics
*To show you how to access the catalogues, and carry out bibliographic research on your topic
*To introduce you to specialist curators at the Library
*To give you an opportunity to network with postgraduate students from other universities across the UK
*The day will contribute to national subject-specific and generic research skills training

More details and booking can be found here.

Help teachers bring real science into schools!

This is a new project designed to help secondary science teachers bring contemporary science and real scientific data into their classes through collaboration with researchers. The project gives researchers the opportunity to communicate their science to a public audience and could lead to longer-term associations between the researchers' institution and schools.

Each researcher would work with one or two individual teachers and interact with them via a website. The aim would be to work with the teachers to develop a classroom resource using the researcher's data.

Anticipated time commitments would be 1 hour/week for 12 weeks.

Participating researchers would be required to provide:

A short written account of their research
A sample data set that could be used by students
A short video biography explaining their career path (if possible)
Science Learning Centres are initially looking for researchers to become involved in the pilot programme in spring 2010. Researchers who would like to know more or who are interested in taking part should email the external contact at freshscience@slcs.ac.uk.

REMINDER - Junk the Jargon - Win £500 for 3 minutes' work!

Junk the Jargon - Win £500 for 3 minutes' work!

Can you communicate your research topic to a broad audience in 3 minutes?

Can you make it interesting, engaging and fun?

Do you want to win £500?!

If you think so, you should enter “Junk the Jargon”, a new competition for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers at Queen Mary.

A competition will be held in each Graduate School in January (details below), and successful participants will go through to the final, held on Wednesday 27^th January, from 5pm. Anyone not participating in the competition is encouraged to come and watch and support the finalists. A drinks reception will be held afterwards.

The final will be judged by a panel of experts, including Prof. Sue Hartley, who is giving the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year, and Dr Tiffany Jenkins, Arts & Society director at the Insitute of Ideas (www.instituteofideas.com). Prizes of £500, £250 and £100 will be awarded for the top three presentations.

You can view videos from a similar, national competition (Famelab) to get an idea of what you can do in 3 minutes: Here and here.

If you have any questions, please e-mail Jo Cordy in ESD.

Details of your Graduate School’s heat:

Science & Engineering: Wednesday 13^th Jan, 5pm in Peoples Palace lecture theatre 1.

Humanities & Social Sciences: Wednesday 13^th Jan, 4:15pm, location TBC

School of Medicine & Dentistry: Wednesday 20^th Jan, Perrin lecture theatre, time TBC

Look out for e-mails with more details of the competition in the near future!

Graduate Entry Medicine - a chance to find out more

You may well be looking at this thinking "I've already got a degree and am halfway to getting a PhD. Why on earth would I want to spend even more time in education?!", but I do have a few friends who decided, post-PhD, to take on a medical degree, so I thought I'd draw your attention to this event in case it's something you were thinking about!

The University of London Careers Group are running a day called "Exploring Graduate Entry into Medicine" on 19th Feb next year. During the day you can find out about:

• Specific degrees, by talking to admissions staff, course organisers and medical students
• The major differences between the courses offered
• How to fund your medical degree
• Writing a successful application form and support statement
• The various entrance exams schools use.

The course is open for booking now, and more details can be found here.