A new academic year!

For any new research students reading this - Welcome to Queen Mary! And for everyone else, I hope you had a great summer whether you stayed here or headed off to more exotic locations!

The programme of Learning Institute workshops for the 2010-11 year is about to start. You should receive a wallplanner listing all the courses soon, and they can also be seen on the google calendar in the sidebar of this blog. This year we have made a bit of a change to the course booking system, to try and ensure that there are spaces on the workshops for people who want to attend. Booking is now open for courses up until Christmas, but for courses in Jan, Feb & March booking won't open until 13th December, and for courses from April - June booking won't open until 1st March 2011. On the booking site there will be a reminder of this, and an invitation to contact me if you have a very good reason for needing to book a course more than a few months in advance.

Throughout the year there will also be various events and competitions you might want to get involved with, both inside QM and outside. I will post information about those on this blog, and also on the Learning Institute PhD pages.

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts, comments, concerns or suggestions about anything to do with your experience at QM!

The Learning Institute

On 1st September 2010, Educational and Staff Development became known as The Learning Institute. This reflects the fact that we not only work with staff across the college, but also with postgraduate and undergraduate students too.

The new Learning Institute (LI) website describes all the services we offer, and also includes pages aimed at PhD students, with information about training opportunities, events, personal development planning and more.

In the near future we will be setting up an area of the site (the Learning Network) especially for research students, which will contain blogs and discussion forums on any topics you would like to talk about. This blog will be moving over to that site soon.

If you have some time, please take a look at the PhD pages on the LI site and let me know whether you think anything needs adding or changing (my contact details can be found on the LI site). I would like the pages to be a useful resource for research students, so any input would be gratefully received!

When the Learning Network is up and running, I will also be inviting research students to contribute to the blog, on any topics they feel are relevant, so if you have any ideas please let me know.

Improve your teaching skills and earn £18 an hour at Queen Mary!

The Queen Mary Careers Team is looking to recruit a PhD student to help manage the seasonal demand (Autumn Term in the first instance) for CV feedback from undergraduate students at Queen Mary.

This is a great opportunity to develop your teaching and facilitation skills, earn some cash, and improve your CV writing skills at the same time!

If you are interested, see the QM Careers blog for further information.

Cafe Scientifique - Next week!

Next Wednesday (16th June) the first Cafe Scientifique event for PhD students and postdocs at QM is happening! This will hopefully be the first of a series of these events, designed to create a relaxed, informal atmosphere where researchers can enjoy free food and wine, chat to each other, hear talks from other researchers and take part in some fun activities such as pub-style quizzes.

These events are for researchers from all disciplines, and next week we will have ten minute talks from Helene Muller (Biological & Chemical Sciences), Tom Sebrell (History) and John Broad (Institute of Cell & Molecular Science). I am always on the lookout for volunteers to talk at future events too, so if you would like to talk about your research, or a related topic, in ten minutes to a very friendly, non-specialist audience, please get in touch!

The evening will start at 6pm at Bar Med, Library Square on the Mile End campus. Please come along - it should be a lot of fun!

To book a place (so we have an idea of numbers for catering) please e-mail Kevin Byron (k.c.byron@qmul.ac.uk).

Biotechnology YES - 2010

Biotechnology YES is an innovative programme and competition aimed at raising awareness of commercialisation of bioscience research. It is co-organised by the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise & Innovation (UNIEI). YES entrants form imaginary companies and bid for funding to commercialise their hypothetical ideas. Through 3-day workshops taking place across the UK this autumn, participants receive training from entrepreneurs, patent lawyers and industry representatives in the business skills necessary to recognise, protect and harness the commercial potential of scientific research outputs.

The culmination of the competition is the preparation and presentation, by each team, of a hypothetical business plan for a new start-up company. The competition is therefore fully in line with the government’s objective of encouraging economic impact and the competition is endorsed by a number of bio-based industries through their sponsorship. In addition, the winning team of the national Biotechnology YES competition will receive a prize of £1000.

Since its launch fifteen years ago, Biotechnology YES has provided entrepreneurial business training for around 3000 researchers from across the UK. A recent independent review of the scheme has highlighted that many former participants found YES to be very influential in developing their careers, with several starting their own companies and many more becoming business professionals within the bioscience sector.

More information can be found at the website. The closing date for entries is June 18th.

This is a really great opportunity for anyone working in the biosciences who is interested in finding out about commercialisation of biotechnology. While I was a PhD students at Leeds I took part in the 2002 (or 2003 maybe) competition. My team attended a local workshop in Edinburgh, where we spent a hectic but amazing few days attending presentations from business and biotech experts, and staying up until all hours putting together our business plan and presentation. We didn't make it through to the final unfortunately, but I learned so much from those few days, both about commercialisation of biotechnology research and about myself and what I am capable of. All in all it was an amazing experience, and one of the most memorable parts of my PhD.

"The Engaging Researcher"

Are you interested in engaging the public in your research but not sure where to start?

Have you done some public engagement activity but would like to improve your knowledge and skills?

Do you have significant experience of achieving mutually beneficial public engagement activity but want to improve your practice?

This one-day event in Manchester on 6th July is aimed at researchers with any level of experience of public engagement. The day will include presentations from key-note speakers and the chance to attend several short workshops based around different areas of public engagement. You will also have an opportunity to start to develop a public engagement project together with exhibitors who will be present on the day, and apply for funding of £1000 to get the activity off the ground.

This event is run by Vitae, and is free to attend. More details and booking information can be found here.

Leadership in Action - Residential Course

From 8-11th June Vitae are running a residential Leadership course for PhD students in Bournemouth. This event was also run last year and was very successful, so if you're interested in attending book soon! Places are free, you just need to pay for your own transport.

More details can be found here. It sounds like a fantastic opportunity (and also a chance to spend a few days by the sea!).