Training Activities

SAL maintains an interdisciplinary and intersectoral setting with partners from academia and industry as a basis for conducting cutting-edge EBS research. CRYSTALLINE will build upon this network and we will provide the ESRs with the essential exposure to experts from academia and innovators from industry in our holistic CRYSTALLINE research environment. The training will be based on three pillars:

• Each CRYSTALLINE ESR has to enroll in a PhD program of the hosting partner univer­sity, the choice depending on the individual re­search topic and the corre­sponding super­vising professor. Besides strength­ening the general skills of the candi­dates, this enroll­ment ensures an independent scientific training explic­itly tailored towards the academic needs and require­ments of the individual position.

  The supervisory team will work with the ESR to work out a course program that will tailor to the ESR’s research, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Courses related to the general skills category should cover a diverse set of aspects and could be related to, e.g., gender studies, scientific writing, ethics in research, courses on patent law and intellectual property rights, entrepreneurship skills, communication and presentation, project management, grant writing, and language courses.

• Each CRYSTALLINE ESR shall actively partic­i­pate in CRYSTALLINE trainings, knowl­edge exchange and collab­o­ra­tion events organized via CRYSTALLINE, as well as in the international research community and interest groups. SAL fosters this knowl­edge exchange by offering a highly inter­na­tional, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­sec­toral EBS ecosystem. Events aggregated under the umbrella CRYSTALLINE scientific forum will enhance collab­o­ra­tions among the ESRs, (see Table 1 for examples). Scientific talks will strengthen interactions with the scientific community, to be complemented by SAL outreach activities like our roadshows that will foster exchange with the general public.

• Each CRYSTALLINE ESR has to conduct short- to mid-term secondments at academic or indus­trial partner orga­ni­za­tions (at least one secondment with a duration of two to six months is obligatory). With such secondments ESR can benefit from (inter­sec­toral) profes­sional trainings, gain further and possibly different insights into the research community as well as their own topic, and they can develop and enhance their personal network which will be an important aspect for future career prospects.

CRYSTALLINE scientific forum (CSF)

The CSF is a key element within the CRYSTALLINE training program to foster collaborations between ESRs, also across different scientific disciplines. One important event as part of the CSF is the CRYSTALLINE summit which will be a yearly, SAL-wide face2face event for networking with fellow ESRs and scientists. We will organize the summit as a scientific event to be hosted preferably at an external Austrian seminar venue. The CRYSTALLINE ESRs will take part in the event organization and management, so that they can make themselves familiar with corresponding tasks and issues. Plenary talks by professors and industry partners will offer (a) new knowledge and (b) also intersectoral exposure. ESRs will present recently published papers, recent research results, or tutorials on a special topic. Social events in the evenings will enhance the community-building aspect.

Training activities in CRYSTALLINE

Table 1: Training activities in CRYSTALLINE