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Overview of the purpose of communication coaching sessions and how these sessions will work with coach Rach Maggs

Funders of academic research and employers of researchers are increasingly valuing individuals with entrepreneurial spirit and a broader set of skills that can be used to innovate and create impact from research.

Researchers with these skills are at an advantage when applying for permanent academic positions, securing research funding, or pursuing commercialisation opportunities.

This interactive session will introduce you to:

1 what an entrepreneurial mindset is and how all researchers can adopt and develop this to pursue their interests
2 the frameworks and tools that are used in the startup world to create compelling business opportunities
3 how you can adapt these to support innovative research, create impact, and secure grant or fellowship funding
4 how to create your personal "elevator pitch" to introduce yourself and create new opportunities at networking events or to future employers.

Introduction to Fellowships What is a Fellowship? Why are they useful? What could a Fellowship mean to your career? How do you create a successful application? Introducing Narrative CVs for researchers – how to share your professional and personal research contributions so that others will care as much as you do.

This session equips participants with all the fundamental skills that they need to research and begin writing their literature review. This includes building and executing effective search strategies to locate relevant materials for literature reviews, projects and other related research activities, key searching techniques, where to search, and how to keep up to date with the latest research. We will then discuss what to do with material participants find during their searching, looking at skills such as critical evaluation, structural reading and how to start writing.

This session will include live demonstrations of scientific databases to demonstrate the key principles covered in action, as well as time for participants to start developing their own key words and search strategies.

This session introduces participants to the concept of research data, all the forms that it can take as well as negotiating the management of different data depending on their type.

Topics such as effective storage, handling sensitive data, and developing best practice approaches to avoid data loss during a project will be covered. The session will also explore how to create a data management plan (DMP) and the support available, as well as providing an overview of useful tools and services both within the University of Cambridge and beyond.

Metrics have become omnipresent in research assessment, but are often flawed and used irresponsibly. This session explores the guidelines in place to help researchers use metrics more responsibly, including recommendations from DORA and University guidance. We'll then look at common metrics such as journal impact factor and h-index, where they are found and how they are used in academia. Finally we will discuss some particular circumstances where researchers should aim to use metrics responsibly, such as tidying up your online profiles, choosing a journal and recruitment.

Participants should leave the session more aware of the issues with particular research metrics and of the guidance available within the University, and confident in their ability to use metrics responsibly in their academic career.

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Using a reference manager is one of the best ways to look after crucial research literature, whether planning for a literature review or simply keeping track of developments in a particular discipline. This session will introduce Zotero, an open source reference manager tool.

Using live demonstrations, discussions, and troubleshooting common referencing issues, the session will give an in-depth look at how Zotero (and tools like it) can help maximise a research project workflow while also ensuring that critical resources and information are not lost at any point in the research process.

One-to-one online Teams session with Sam Byers, to discuss training development aspirations and plan personalised training programme for the coming academic year.

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This interactive 3 hour workshop, led by Patent Attorneys from Marks & Clerk will be divided into two distinct sessions.

Introduction to Intellectual Property (IP) In this session we provide a presentation on what IP is and the different forms it can come in, giving an overview of patents, designs, trade marks , copyright and trade secrets, explaining what each of these is and how they may be of value. The session then focusses on patents, with information given on the rights conferred by a patent and how someone would obtain a patent for their invention. In particular, we focus on the importance of novelty and inventive step of the claims of a patent application, as well as the importance of data to support your invention and how much data may be considered sufficient. Following this presentation, the students are given an interactive case study to work through in small groups. This case study takes a real world patent that was opposed and asks the students to assess whether patent claims that were filed in an appeal are novel and inventive over three pieces of prior art. This task is talked through thoroughly before students are asked to make a judgment in their groups. Each group will then feedback and we go through what the answer is and why this was interesting, focusing on how the data of the application combined with the prior art show that the invention is plausible.

Commercial Relationships between Academia and Industry In this session an overview of different relationships between academia and industry is given along with some of the benefits and pitfalls of these various relationships. We give an overview of what to look out for with grant funding and the importance of considering the different agendas of the parties involved in collaborative projects. This is followed by discussion of the various compromises that should be considered to maintain positive relationships with collaborators. Towards the end of the session there is discussion on considering the ownership of any results generated in collaborative projects.

This half-day led by Jenny Brady, is an interactive workshop will introduce the principles of imposter phenomena (which I call Imposter Moments) and how they affect researchers at each stage of their careers. This is an opportunity to consider how imposter moments can sometimes be a useful element of your progress but also practical ways to manage it if it’s causing challenges.