Led by the People Working Group, the Career Development Programme offers an array of courses and activities to help researchers succeed in different phases of their careers. Some of the courses are also open to the broader research community, which gives additional visibility to BIST within the Catalan research community.
BIST centres by using the VITAE’s framework, have organised an interactive and intensive two-day course: “How to succeed in your PhD?”, which has been designed for you as first year doctoral researcher and will look at practical ways to increase your effectiveness and meet the challenges of your PhD.
The program covers PhD project planning, effective working practices, working with others in the research environment, creativity for collaborative research, negotiation skills, motivation and getting feedback. Participants are placed in learning groups to work on a range of activities. From this you will gain awareness of your performance as an individual and in a team. You will use and develop skills that are essential for a researcher, such as communication, planning, time management, problem solving, conflict resolution, as well as building a greater self-awareness of your learning and working styles. Furthermore you will create good atmosphere to promote collaborative research among your peers from different scientific fields.
“I’ve specially liked the fact it was really interactive and full of useful tips”
The course How to succeed in your PhD [II] for doctoral students has been exclusively designed by Kate Mahoney and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) using VITAE’s framework. It will offer you the opportunity to focus on developing competences for successful self-management and development during the doctorate.
To empower participants to learn about themselves and the skills needed to maintain momentum during the middle years of their PhD. The course is designed to inspire, challenge and embed knowledge through providing an experiential learning environment both online and face to face.
“A course that teaches you that some of the daily problems of scientists have been studied and some of them have pretty simple solutions.”
The Writing Bootcamp is a multi-session online course for final-year PhD students at different institutions associated with BIST, who aim to submit their theses. The contents offered consist of a balanced mix of theory and tools, practical experience and discussions.
From Science to Business (FS2B) is a course sponsored by the TBDO (Technology & Business Development Office) and directed to BIST scientist wishing to strengthen their network with the local innovation ecosystem. The course is offered through the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) in collaboration with the ESADE Business School and it aims at developing entrepreneurship and innovation skills among the members of the BIST community.
“It was pitched at exactly the right level for me, consolidating much basic knowledge that I have without having formal business training.”
BIST is organising a new edition of its programme Leadership in Action, designed by using VITAE’s framework, which will offer you the opportunity to focus on developing skills for successful self-management and development to progress in your professional career. The course is offered to postdoctoral researchers currently working at BIST research centres, but is also open to external postdoctoral community.
The aim of the Leadership in Action program is to develop leadership best practices whilst using your own strengths and style to:
- Encourage team cohesion and collaboration
- Develop techniques that support effective resource and task management
- Create a culture of open, proactive communication and decision-making
“The SMART objective framework has been particularly useful for me. I can now systematically review whether a project is lacking some of these objectives (most of the times, it is either unrealistic or not timebound) and correct it. I think this has saved me a lot of time!”
In this course we introduce the basic concepts, techniques and procedures of Project Management. We learn the vocabulary and general guidelines and understand the process in its entirety. The course aims to offer a very broad and general vision of the Project Management framework, and the assimilation of concepts will be achieved combining theory and practice and with Collaborative learning through the preparation of practical cases in groups, always with a hands-on approach.
“The experience during these days has been fantastic and that has been possible thanks to you Iolanda for your professionalism, to all the team participating in the course and of course to BIST!”
The programme will focus on providing participants with the required tools and information to facilitate the transfer and valorisation of research results to the market, specifically via the development of partnerships with corporate clients. It will also provide a space to showcase, co-create and work on two real case studies: two research projects of the GraphCAT initiative.
This programme is meant to be an introductory workshop targeting all researchers (Postdocs and PhDs) involved in the BIST-GraphCAT community.
The programme will provide researchers with the tools to better understand the opportunity behind scientific projects in terms of valorization, commercialization and partnerships with industry. It should also provide researchers with an understanding of how the corporate world works.
It is a hands-on approach that will also provide tools to learn how to work with peer researchers in multidisciplinary teams and increase skills in communication, sales pitch, strategy and other technical aspects related to the commercialization process, using two graphene-related research projects of the GraphCAT initiative.
Science and technology has evolved a lot in the last years, but have ethics and integrity evolved at the same speed? Scientists from all fields can join us for this online workshops (discussion-based) and discover which are the main misconducts and challenges they face in their day to day research. Getting to know the risks and the consequences is important, but also to be aware of those perils, learn how to react properly, and make sure that your peers, supervisors, and teams are also aware and keep up high standards of integrity and responsibility. Keeping these standards high is a shared responsibility, so this workshop is divided in two main blocks, one for the students (predocs and postdocs) and one for the managers (group leaders, staff with manager responsibilities). We also think that depending on your field, you will find different challenges, so each block has been divided in two sessions: one workshop focused on participants working in Life Sciences and another one for Physical Sciences.
Check the events page for the current and upcoming activities!
BIST centres
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