Our newly recruited synBIOcarb ESRs and their supervisors met for the first time together for a four day training event hosted by the University of Leeds. Two of our synBIOcarb project partners, Glycoselect and the University of Orleans, were also able to participate.
The trip began with a day out in North Yorkshire, taking in the delights of Brimham Rocks, Betty’s Tearoom and the Bolton Abbey Estate. All in all a fantastic start for the ESRs to get to know each other!
During the formal sessions our ESRs experienced some exceptional training including how to present to large audiences from performance coach Jane Oakshott MBE, how to communicate your science from Artesc, how to manage research and research ethics from Alastair Hay OBE. They were able to spend time thinking about their personal development as a first step towards preparing their career development plans and we were very delighted to have Professor Birte Svensson from the Technical University of Denmark join as an external mentor. She shared her expertise with our young researchers and gave some valuable starting guidance during an informal group discussion session.
Birte Svensson with synbiocarb ESRs following their mentoring session
After such a successful start to the synBIOcarb training programme our researchers are beginning to drive their project work forward and everyone is now looking forward to the next training event hosted by the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology where they will receive more in depth science training and guidance on scientific writing techniques.
