Happy New Year from Vitae!
It has been an exciting year for Vitae and we would like to thank you all for your contributions, participation and collaboration. Together with our hubs we have organised and collaborated on 36 events, including a new series of Making your Mark events for research staff and our Every Researcher Counts Conferences.
Our annual Vitae International Researcher Development Conference saw the launch of the latest CROS and PIRLS reports and a first glimpse at our new website which will be available next year.
We have also published the latest ‘What do researchers do? publication, which indicated doctoral graduates are more ‘recession proof' than graduates with other qualifications.
We reviewed the implementation strategies of over 100 research organisations across Europe which held the EC HR Excellence in Research Award in Autumn 2012. 17 UK higher education institutions have gained the award in the process managed by Vitae and 15 have retained their awards after the two-year review.
To support your RDF engagement activities, we have developed the Vitae RDF Development Cards, which are on an Early Bird Offer until the end of the year. We are now also supporting 65 higher education organisation in the UK and abroad in using the Vitae RDF Planner, an online career-management tool for researchers.
We have created the ‘Getting started lens' for researchers in the first few months of their doctoral research and we are launching the ‘Researcher mobility' lens today in collaboration with Euraxess, as part of the ImpactE project, which is looking at the skills researchers need to be most effective in any environment.
Our international work has included projects in Europe, Japan and Australia.
We would also like to thank everyone who contributed so far to the survey on our new membership offer. The survey will be open until the 18 December so you can share your views until Wednesday. We will provide more information in the new year.
During 2014, we will:
- coordinate a phased launch of a new website, which will include new features such as exclusive communities and new content. The first version of the website will be available in February with further developments released throughout the year
- be launching our membership for international organisations, which will include access to expert networks, award-winning training resources and practice-sharing groups
- co-host the final of the UK Three-minute thesis competition with the University of York
- run a number of training programmes for researchers including the Effective Researcher and Part-time Researcher as well as the Leadership in Action course in March - Early Bird bookings are available now.
- organise the next Vitae Conference (9-10 September), Vitae Research Staff Conference (14 November) and a series of Train the Trainer events for researcher developers
Wishing you all a very happy holiday season!
The Vitae Team
