Example development activities include:
- Talking to journalists and media training
- Engaging in social media
- Writing lay articles and blog posts
- Consultancy skills training
- Developing a consultancy or spin-out
- Developing entrepreneurial skills
- Public engagement and outreach
- Widening participation activities
- Business and enterprise competitions
- Volunteering at festivals and events
- Engagement with policy makers
- Networking beyond academia and research
Spotlight on activities to develop skills for engaging with society and working beyond R&I
What development activities helped you?
Find out from other research staff about the development activities that helped them to develop skills relating to engaging with society and working beyond R&I.
More examples
"I attended sessions by Imperial Consultants (ICON) and PFDC. They covered consultancy through the internal imperial outfit, and what it meant for you as a researcher in terms of getting permission from your department to engage in such activity and how to get paid."
- Dr Julia Makinde, Benevolent AI (former Postdoc in the Department of Infectious Diseases)
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"My research articles received a lot of media attention, so I got to work with the science communicators, both at Imperial as well as outside. I did a podcast interview with Science Magazine and, because I had never done one before, Imperial science communicators coached me. They helped to think about how to prepare and how to pace myself when I talk. That was very helpful because the podcast is going to be there for a long time and, fortunately, it went well."
- Dr Pavani Cherukupally, MIT (former Postdoc in the Department of Chemical Engineering)
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- Digital skills training
- Working with the media
- PFDC Workshops on maximising impact and getting media coverage
"I put myself forward for the Royal Society Pairing Scheme. It was a crash course in policy. What we see on television on and the news, is a few degrees removed from what actually happens in terms of influencing policy and making sure evidence feeds through the process. That was really amazing for me.
The big benefit was that I got the opportunity to host the head of the Science and Technology Committee in our lab. He came up to Imperial, which was quite a big deal and so Imperial Forum were involved. I was then able to work with them on preparing material to train people to towards engaging with policy. I then got invited to feed into policy discussions that affected a change in policy for people living with HIV in England. It led to a domino effect, that went on for years from just one sort of training that came out of what I had lined up in my PRDP."
- Dr Julia Makinde, Benevolent AI (former Postdoc in the Department of Infectious Diseases)
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"I transitioned my career going more from research to translational activities and took part in three main accelerator programmes:
- MedTech SuperConnector, which is a program that brought together prospective entrepreneurs with a business idea in medical technology. It was 6 months of training in start-ups, and how to build a company and a business idea out of research project. We also performed customer discovery, how to test the business idea, marketing, sales and so on.
- The Enterprise Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering gave me training on entrepreneurship, finance, accounting and wider activities that are also very important, for example, team building and company culture. I also received one to one mentoring and coaching that really helped in the different types of relationships that you have to build when you move out of academia.
- Becoming a Science Founder is a shorter five-week programme developed by Wilbe, which is a company that helps scientists and engineers to bring their research ideas into industry."
- Dr Dorian Haci, MintNeuro (former Postdoc in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
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