Training programme

The training includes both formal and informal components that will develop scientific, technical, complementary, interpersonal and transferable skills to prepare the fellows for a wide range of career opportunities in the academic, commercial, industry and regulatory sectors represented by the organisations in the network.

This training is available to all research fellows across the network.

Skills are developed through a comprehensive and flexible programme of academic and non-academic training, which includes the following integrated components:

• Formal taught modules provided by the academic partners, which covers the multiple disciplines required within the project. These include units which develop scientific and technical competencies for individual research topics, in addition to units which develop more generic and complementary skills (e.g. research management, effective communication, leadership, team working, career management).
• Network-hosted thematic workshops and seasonal schools, which cover training in scientific and technical areas that provide core knowledge, practical skills and experience in analytical methods, investigation techniques and data interpretation to support the research undertaken by fellows. These events are delivered jointly by the academic and non-academic partners with contributions from external scientists.
• Network-hosted supervised secondments, work placements, job-shadowing and in-house training provided by the industry partners. This training provides practical experience of working within various business functions, to enhance the development of scientific, technical, management and transferable skills. It covers all sectors of the field, from problem holders to regulatory agencies covering the commercial, non-governmental and research arenas, and from SMEs to multi-national companies. The training can be tailored to cover technical and non-technical aspects that suit the specific interests and development needs of each research fellow.

Training is structured to focus on formal tuition and attendance at network-hosted events delivered by the project partners in the first year, with greater emphasis on independent research linked to specific topics in work packages and experiential training through secondments with both academic and non-academic partners in later years of each fellowship.