The Research Futures Academy aims to enhance the development of researchers, enable collaboration as a key part of the research culture and support the career development of research staff and research degree students.
Development themes for this semester include career management, research supervision skills and the first in our series of the carpentries sessions for staff. For new PhD students our 'Getting Started' programme kicks off with an induction session followed by a series of seven workshops covering key skills to support you in the early stages of your research journey at Heriot-Watt.
In addition, Hugh Kearns of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, will deliver his ever popular lectures and workshop on being - and supporting - successful PhD students.
Further details of researcher development and Academic CPD opportunities are available on the Research Futures website pages and are published every month in this e-newsletter.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Research Futures Academy programmes in the coming year.
Course bookings are now open for our 2019 workshop programmes. See our online booking system PDMSfor more details.
Research Futures Academy:
Postgraduate Researcher Programme
For new PhD Students the 'Getting Started' programme of workshops begins on Friday 1 March 2019 at 1.30 pm with an Induction and Welcome session. Come along to meet senior staff and other researchers and to hear about the research culture at HWU. Further sessions in the programme will be held during March providing opportunities to develop valuable skills in the early stages of your research journey:
Citing and Referencing - Tuesday5 March 2019
Literature Searching - Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 March 2019
Critical Thinking - Wednesday 20 March 2019
Strategic Reading of the Research Literature - Tuesday 26 March 2019
Further sessions will run in April.
The following workshops are open to all PhD Students:
Career Management: Careers Beyond Academia will run on Friday 8 March 2019 9:15 - 12:15. There are a number of options beyond academia open to PhD graduates. Not everyone chooses an academic career and throughout your PhD you will have developed a number of key skills that can be utilised in a variety of other sectors. This workshop aims to highlight a number of careers outside academia and to explore what particular options might be attractive to you.
The lecture will include overviews of different job types, case studies of researchers who have moved into different careers and provide resources to help you explore your options. You will also undertake exercises to help you reflect on your own skills and experience, to enable you to communicate these effectively in written applications and interviews.
Join us for the popular Hugh Kearns' lecture The Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Students on Wednesday 27 March 2019 13:30 - 16:00.
This workshop describes the key habits that iThinkWell’s research and experience with thousands of students shows will make a difference to how quickly and easily you complete your degree. Just as importantly, these habits can greatly reduce the stress and increase the pleasure involved in completing a degree. The workshop will help you to understand how to increase your effectiveness and outcomes in the following key areas:
how you deal with your supervisor,
how you structure your study time,
your attitude (or lack thereof!) in relation to your research,
dealing with writer’s block or having difficulty writing,
getting the help you need when you are stuck,
keeping on going when the going gets tough,
juggling multiple commitments and never having enough time.
The Balanced Researcher workshop, also led by Hugh Kearns will run on Friday 29 March 2019 14.30 - 17.00. This workshop will describe the most useful strategies that thousands of researchers have found helpful in balancing the many demands on their time.
Additional workshops including Research Writing, Career Management and Viva Preparation will run during Semester 2.
Registration for these and other workshops is now open. Keep checking back on PDMS as well as our External Opportunities webpage for more opportunities which will be added during 2019.
Research Futures Academy:
Academic CPD
There are a number of options beyond academia open to those with a research background. Not everyone chooses an academic career and throughout your research you will have developed a number of key skills that can be utilised in a variety of other sectors. The Career Management: Careers Beyond Academia workshop will run on Friday 8 March 2019 13:15 - 16:15. This workshop aims to highlight a number of careers beyond academia and to explore what particular options might be attractive to you. The workshop will include overviews of different job types, case studies of researchers who have moved into different careers and provide resources to help you explore your options.
Join us for the Hugh Kearns' session Creating the "Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Students" on Wednesday 27 March2019 9:30 - 12:00. You know what your research students should be doing, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Despite your best efforts to set up good habits for your students, it does not work. Why is this, and what can you do to make completing a research degree easier for your students and for you?
This course gives you practical strategies to deal with common problems such as supervisor/student relations, dealing with writer’s block and getting your student to seek help when they are stuck.
New workshops
We will running two brand-new workshops this spring and summer in collaboration with EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) and the Software Sustainability Institute, to teach foundational coding, and data science skills to researchers undertaking computational or data-intensive research.
Software Carpentry will run on Thursday 28 March 2019 09.00 - 16.30 and aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation.
Data Carpentry will run in June (date to be confirmed shortly) and will focus on introductory computational skills needed for data management and analysis in all domains of research. It is ideal training for researchers wishing to learn how to use open source tools to make their research open and reproducible.
No prior computational experience is required for either of these workshops. During the workshops, participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems”. Look out for details via PDMS.
The University expects all PhD Supervisors to attend a supervisory development workshop at least once every three years. The next Doctoral Supervisor workshops Supervise - Enhancing your Supervisory Practice will run on Wednesday 10 April 201912.00 - 14.00 and 15.00 - 17.00. Supervisors can register to attend one of the workshops by going to the Research Futures Academy's on line booking system PDMS.
More workshops are being added to our research staff programme for the current academic year so keep checkingPDMSfor new opportunities. Please also check out ourExternal Opportunitiespage. We tap into wide and varied networks to keep you updated about further events, training and funding you can access to enhance your skills and career development.
“Geopoetry – can it save the world?”
By Patrick Corbett (Heriot-Watt University)
Date: Thursday 7 March 2019
Time: 13:30-14:30
Location: Lyell Seminar Room 2
(Drop-in session - no registration needed)
Abstract
“Of all the geosciences, geology is probably the one lending itself best to poetic expression” says Andrew McBarnett recently (Crosstalk, First Break, Jan 2019). When considering geological references in poetry, there seems to be a number of separate strands. Firstly, there is the romantic, philosophic, poetry of the earth, of the Kenneth White school of geopoetics (refer to the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics). Secondly, there is the use of geological terms as images by poets that express there feelings and capture atmosphere, but that may not make geological sense. Thirdly, there is the use of poetry to capture the essence of a geological issue (e.g., unconformities, river sediments, climate change, the Anthropocene). There is a wide diversity of poetic forms that make the medium very flexible: e.g., sonnets, haikus, limericks, concrete poems and free verse. These can be used to capture some theoretical scientific facts (usually the domain of prose) along with the soul that poetry traditionally captures. Poetry - like rocks – is essentially layered and has depth . Additional to the geopoetry, youth is increasingly turning to poetry as a way to combat health and wellbeing issues. It is used to express feelings, help communication, reduce isolation and increase student engagement. In this talk, we review all these issues and posit that poetry is probably underutilised and that it can certainly help save somethings!
Bio
Professor Patrick Corbett, PhD, DSc, FGS, FRSE
Patrick Corbett graduated in 1977 with a degree in Geology (Exeter University) followed by a MSc in Micropalaeontology in 1978 (University College London), a postgraduate Diploma in Geological Statistics in 1982 (Kingston University), a PhD in Petroleum Engineering (Geopseudo Upscaling, 1993, Heriot-Watt University) and a DSc “Petroleum Geoengineering” (Heriot-Watt University - July 2006).
From 1978, Patrick worked for 11 years in industry in various positions in international exploration and development geoscience for Unocal in the UK, Netherlands and Indonesia. Since coming to Heriot-Watt University in 1989, his research focus has been on the integration of geoscience and engineering through geological analysis, petrophysical measurement and flow modelling. Current research areas include permeability anisotropy modelling, well test interpretation, dynamic upscaling, and genetic petrophysics – particularly in sandstones (fluvial) and carbonates. He has been closely involved in the Master’s course in Reservoir Evaluation and Management since its inception, a unique course designed to teach the integrated nature of reservoir description and modelling to geologists, petrophysicists, geophysicists, computer scientists and petroleum engineers. He has been involved in research initiatives in the broader Energy field and Sustainability - particularly with respect to the Petroleum Industry and links to Marine Renewables as Head of the Energy Academy at Heriot-Watt University. From 2003- 2009 he was Head of the Institute of Petroleum Engineering and from 2009-12 Head of the Energy Academy. He was Sub-Dean of Heriot-Watt University (2002-5) and is a Member of University Senate (since 2015) and Court (2017). In January 2012, after many years as the Total Professor, he took up a Visiting Professorship at UFRJ in Rio for 2 years and this continued after returning to UK as the BG Group Professor of Carbonate Petroleum Geoengineering (2012-18). He is a Council Member for the HWU Watt Club (alumni association).
He is a member of AAPG, EAGE, SEG, PESGB, SCA, SPE, SPWLA, a Fellow of the Geological Society, a Chartered Geologist and a Chartered Scientist. He is an Associate Editor of First Break. He has published more than 90 reviewed journal papers, and is a co-author of books entitled “Statistics for Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists” and “Cores from the Northwest European Hydrocarbon Province”. Patrick was an EAGE Distinguished Lecturer (Petroleum Geoengineering) for 1998 and an SPE Distinguished Lecturer (Integration of Geology and Well Testing) for 1998-9. He was SCA VP Arrangements for 2001. In 2005, he was awarded the Wegener Medal by the EAGE for the integration of geoscience and geoengineering. He was SPE EUROPEC Chairman for Madrid 2005. Patrick was awarded the 2006 SPE Europe and Russia Regional Technical Award for Distinguished Contribution to Petroleum Engineering in the Area of Reservoir Description and Dynamics. This award recognised his “..long years of dedicated service to the industry, singular devotion of time and effort to the programme and development of your section and region, and our Society”. He was the 2009 SEG/EAGE Distinguished Instructor delivering a one-day course in Petroleum Geoengineering in 26 international locations. He was the AAPG Distinguished Lecturer in Europe for 2013-14 on Carbonate Geoengineering and teaches industry courses. In 2010, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 2017, he took partial retirement and started walking the UK coast (1200kms to date). During these walks, he started writing poetry and has become interested in developing geopoetry for scientific communication, public outreach and as a tool for student engagement and wellbeing.
Wednesday March 20 2019 10:15 – 11:15
Presentations will be about past, present and future research, as well as public engagement activities. Research is within three themes: Work, Society, and Environment; Lifespan Health and Wellbeing; and Cognition, Brain, and Behaviour. Following an oral presentation there will be the opportunity to view research posters and discuss with academic staff, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.
This is a new workshop from the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE). This session is tailored for more experienced researchers, mid-career researchers, and associate professors. It is designed to help manage more mature research, including initiating and leading complex research projects, and capitalise on existing networks and academic contacts.
#VitaeChat: Raising the profile of researcher career development
With recent attention on the wellbeing and mental health of researchers and their career development by the higher education and research community, this #vitaechat aims to bring together researcher developers and researchers to explore opportunities to influence how researchers’ career development is prioritised by universities.
Research Futures Academy contact details Research Futures Academy is the new name for the Centre for Academic Leadership and Development.
If you’d like to contact us, please email or telephone as shown below or pop into our new Admin Office - LBB G.04. We look forward to hearing from you!
