Dr Dawn Duke

Dawn Duke is the Head of Researcher Development within the University of Surrey’s Doctoral College.  She leads the team that supports the transferable/employability skills of postgraduate researchers and early career researchers across all disciplines, as well as delivers supervisor training. Dawn received her PhD from Imperial College in the field of Neuroscience.  In 2008, she moved from researching and teaching in the field of Neuroscience to concentrate fully on researcher development.  Over the years, she has worked to embed and normalise skills training in order to better prepare researchers for the variety of opportunities available to them.  Through her work at Surrey and also through a partial secondment as Director of Graduate Training for the Southeast Physics Network (SEPnet), she has focused on bringing researchers together with employers from a range of sectors, integrating this wider range of expertise into training and creating spaces for discussion and experience sharing.  This model provides an opportunity for two-way dialogue to enhance understanding between academia and other sectors. It also allows for serendipity to spark innovation, while at the same time enhancing the employability skills and broadening the horizons of newer researchers.  Dawn believes that the world would be a better place if the amazing research that is done within our Universities had an even greater impact on policy, society and the economy and is dedicated to enabling the next generation of researchers so that they can take on this challenge