Western postdoctoral students and supervisors will be celebrating their own today as part of the Postdoctoral Research Forum highlighting research success and career opportunities beyond academia.
The one-day event, beginning at 8:30 a.m. in the Great Hall, features discussions about how to build a successful brand and developing a sustainable, five-year research program which can be used for applying to grants and training graduate students. This discussion, which includes three different perspectives about the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), will be led by Kevin Shoemaker, Kinesiology; John Ronald, Medical Biophysics; and Jean-François Millaire, Anthropology.
The forum also includes a discussion by CIHR Sciences Strategy Director Alysha Croker on Research Skills outside Academia. Croker will also join a panel discussion on How to translate and apply acquired postdoc research skills, along with Lise Caron, Director National Resources Canada; Steven Harrison, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association; and Ted Mao, Vice-President Trojan Technologies.
In the afternoon, Western postdoctoral students will have the opportunity to showcase their research in a Three-Minute Thesis format. Called the Three-Minute Research Competition, students will present their research and its impact, and the top three contestants will be awarded cash prizes to assist the winners in attending conferences to promote their research and further their career network.
Following the presentations for the Three-Minute Research Competition, the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies will honour the winners, along with naming Postdoctoral Scholar of the Year, Postdoctoral Supervisor of the Year, Award for Administrative Excellence in the Support of Postdoctoral Scholars at Western and The Postdoctoral Association at Western’s Postdoctoral Mentor of the Year Award.