Upcoming Events

Date: Tuesday 2nd - Wednesday 10th June 2020 

Location: online

Trainer: Rick Scavetta

Description:  This workshop enables life scientists to understand the purpose and uses of classical statistics as an integral part of the scientific method. 

The workshop consists of three sections: Collecting, Describing & Inferring. Practical tools and the theoretical background to understand how they work will be introduced. Mathematical equations will be used when helpful and are provided in the reference book, but they will not be the focus of the workshop. Our goal is to enlighten via intuitive understanding, not confuse via math.

Topics Covered:

• good experimental design and sources of bias.
• systematic versus random error.
• the distinction between samples and populations.
• the most appropriate ways to describe samples.
• estimation and the principle of hypothesis testing.
• the standard error of the mean and confidence intervals.
• understanding and reporting uncertainty.
• power, type I and type II errors.
• standard parametric tests and their interpretations, including p-values, test statistics, and associated distributions.

Date: Thursday 25th - Friday 26th June 2020

Location:  online

Trainer: Andreas Binder

Description: This two-day workshop is „hands-on“, i.e. you will directly practice the course contents at the computer during the workshop. It will start from scratch and teach you the basics of vector graphics until you will be able to draw your own schematics and data figures. The trainer can flexibly adapt to your needs if you would like to have special topics covered. It can also include basics of Adobe Photoshop. By the end of the workshop, you will be able to apply your new skills to create and design advanced graphics and data representations for talks, posters, and your publications.

Date: Friday 10th - Saturday 11th July and Friday 17th or Saturday 18th July 2020

Location: Small Conference Room, 1st floor, T-building, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Ruth Willmott

Description: In the Career Mentoring and Management: Applying for Jobs on the Wider Market workshop, you will receive comprehensive career mentoring about the wealth of alternative career paths that are open to you as well as advice on how to best find and access these jobs. You will also be armed with key communication skills that will prove to be a prerequisite for career success on the wider market. You will be given advice on how to optimally build your CV and resumé as well as on how to write convincing personal career mission statements and strong core competencies summaries that will be attractive to a wide range of future employers. You will also learn how to best present your skills and talents in attention-grabbing application letters. Finally, we will role play questions that regularly come up during interviews to ensure that you gain the competitive edge over other application candidates.

Date: Thursday 24th - Friday 25th September 2020

Location: S30-31, IT training room, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Andreas Binder

Description: This two-day workshop is „hands-on“, i.e. you will directly practice the course contents at the computer during the workshop. It will start from scratch and teach you the basics of vector graphics until you will be able to draw your own schematics and data figures. The trainer can flexibly adapt to your needs if you would like to have special topics covered. It can also include basics of Adobe Photoshop. By the end of the workshop, you will be able to apply your new skills to create and design advanced graphics and data representations for talks, posters, and your publications.

 
Date: Monday 5th - Wednesday 7th October 2020

Location: Large Conference Room, 1st floor, T-building, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Ruth Willmott

Description: Do you have data to publish, but keep putting off writing that paper because you don’t know where to begin? 

How to get started and keep going as well as what goes where and in which tense will be the starting point of this workshop. We will also review key scientific sentence structures as well as strategies to keep your text concise and precise. Issues such as how to create flow and generate the correct level of emphasis will also be discussed. Together we will explore how to make scientific writing understandable and readable and begin the process of integrating these factors into your own scientific writing style. Finally, we will formulate a plan on how you can improve your scientific vocabulary and writing style for future writing tasks. The Scientific Writing Workshop is ideal for non-native English-speaking early-stage research scientists

Date: Thursday 22nd - Friday 23rd October 2020

Location: Large Conference Room, 1st floor, T-building, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Marco Masia

Description:
The workshop will focus on core concepts in entrepreneurial capacity building, using the approach pioneered by the Harvard Business School, that is currently used by leading Business Schools worldwide. In addition to its core components, the workshop will tailor specific elements to the customer expertise, research programme, and needs. This workshop is structured to teach researchers how to navigate an entrepreneurial journey from idea generation to starting a business.

Working in teams, Researchers will be trained to identify an entrepreneurial idea, make it profitable, improve on it, start a business, and deliver a successful product. Key learning objectives are: 

1. To understand the challenges of creating a business and how to overcome them; 
2. To identify the risks involved in an entrepreneurial endeavor and avoid typical pitfalls; 
3. To understand which strategies need to be followed in order to be successful in business.

The trainer, Dr. Marco Masia, is a scientist and entrepreneur. With a MSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Physics, he has worked as a Professor of Theoretical Chemistry for ten years at the University of Sassari. He has published many high impact papers (in Science, and other highly ranked journals), participated in European projects, and collaborated with diverse research teams across the world. With a Masters of Business Administration from the Frankfurt School of Business, he has founded and managed a start-up, has managed a large non-profit organization, and currently advises start-ups and SMEs. The training syllabus draws from his unique experience in research, business and entrepreneurship, and management, and is tailored specifically to researchers.

Date: Saturday 7th November 2020

Location: Small Conference Room, 1st floor, T-building, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Ruth Willmott

Description: The Career Orientation: Shaping and Steering your Career Path workshop is aimed at providing you with (1) professional advice on what your career options are and (2) hands-on mentoring on how to make it on your chosen career path whether in academia or on the wider market or both. Such an approach will allow you to make informed strategic choices on how best to shape and steer your career path.

 
Date: Monday 7th - Wednesday 9th December 2020

Location: Large Conference Room, 1st floor, T-building, MPI of Biochemistry

Trainer: Ruth Willmott

Description: Do you have data to publish, but keep putting off writing that paper because you don’t know where to begin?

How to get started and keep going as well as what goes where and in which tense will be the starting point of this workshop. We will also review key scientific sentence structures as well as strategies to keep your text concise and precise. Issues such as how to create flow and generate the correct level of emphasis will also be discussed. Together we will explore how to make scientific writing understandable and readable and begin the process of integrating these factors into your own scientific writing style. Finally, we will formulate a plan on how you can improve your scientific vocabulary and writing style for future writing tasks. The Scientific Writing Workshop is ideal for non-native English-speaking early stage research scientists