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Using the Skills Training Programme courses, the Medical Sciences Division seeks to equip Graduate Research Students and Research Staff members with a comprehensive set of skills ensuring each researcher realises his/her maximum potential and thereby lay the foundations for a successful career in the sciences.

A full day conference for research staff from the 5 North East Universities with a programme aimed to help researchers reflect upon their own professional development and focus on the actions they can take to develop and manage their careers

This 'PI Development Programme' offers a range of transferable skills training, designed to assist the professional development of postdoctoral researchers, who are new to, or aspire to, the role of research leader.

The University has set up a fund to support local training initiatives led by researchers (PhD students and research staff) themselves. This Researcher-Led Fund is available for specific projects/activities/events initiated by research students or research staff for the benefit of groups of researchers at a School, research unit or research group level.

An institutional programme provided by departments, faculties and the University for postgraduate researchers. Complimented by an online tool 'MyPGR' containing a JSS-linked Development Needs Analysis, Record of Supervision Meetings, Skills Record and Personal Development Planner.

This is a brief summary of the organisational model that we have adopted in order to work more closely with Schools, Faculties and Departments and 'partner' with them in understanding and providing for the needs of their particular staff in a ‘bespoke’ way where appropriate. This positions us better to target our resource towards meeting real needs, while striving for enhanced alignment between UCL’s research strategy and individual aspirations. This new model also enables us to work more closely in partnership with other key people deployed at a Faculty or Department level, such as Research Facilitators, Research Leaders, HR Consultants, Faculty Managers etc.

Developing research funding applications is a multi-stage process including; refining the question and methods, finding collaborators, identifying appropriate funding sources, knowing what makes a successful application and who to get advice from, costing the bid and writing the application form. This project seeks to address some of these stages. The specific objectives are: 1. To create a series of short video clips/ audio recordings featuring staff from Department of Health Sciences, covering: • Features of successful applications. These will spotlight on senior staff who are panel members for some of the major health research funding bodies. • Staff experiences of applying for external funding. These will contain reflections of staff who have applied for research funding, both successful and unsuccessful. These resources will be stored on the Health Sciences Staff Intranet (on a web page dedicated to the project) with links from both research and teaching related pages. An online survey will give people who access the resource an opportunity to feedback their views on its usefulness. 2. To establish a Learning Set of early to mid career research staff to facilitate the development of skills in writing research funding applications. Early to mid career researchers will present research ideas to the learning set for discussion or commenting on applications in progress. The group would meet once a month and maintain an email list of members that could be contacted for advice when needed. The project team will be supported by two senior members of staff (Karen Bloor and Karen Spilsbury) and has been approved by Head of Department (Professor Christine Godfrey) and Chair of Departmental Research Committee (Professor Nicky Cullum).

The Social Media sessions demonstrated a successful integration of a student-led initiative within a formal graduate training provision. The initiative underlined the importance of engaging PhD students in their own learning and training needs, in both sharing expertise with peers and in contributing to their own professional development. In doing so, it demonstrated to other postgraduate researchers how they might utilise their own areas of expertise to develop further student-led initiatives.

The Jubilee Graduate Centre (JGC) has been exclusively developed for postgraduate students and early career researchers. It works closely with Schools on the Jubilee Campus to develop Faculty-specific training and careers events for PGRs/ECRs focusing on transferable skills, and which reflect the requirements of the Funding Councils.