Training Program (4)
Scienseed (SCS) will teach a series of science outreach and public engagement workshops and provide continuous, individual online training sessions (1 hr/every 2 months) to monitor and assist the students in creating their own outreach material. Each of the workshops will be divided into different modules, each of them consisting of a seminar taught by science communication experts, and practical sessions in which the students will apply the novel concepts to their own particular projects. In each of the modules, the annual production of outreach material from students will be subjected to discussions and critical analysis. The first module will introduce the framework of the course, providing insight into the purpose for public dissemination of science and introducing the style and the different approaches to communicate science to a lay audience. The second module will provide a more in-depth training on the different formats for science outreach (written, video, podcast, motion graphics, videogames, and activities) and the use social networks and other online tools. The final module will cover the novel trends in data science in order to measure the repercussion and outreach of science outreach activities and to assess their effect on the public awareness of science. As part of this final module students will present the overall contribution and impact of their science outreach activities (communication portfolio). Finally, students will deliver selected talks to a wider un-trained audience as part of the overall public engagement activity.
The Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine (SGBM) of the University of Freiburg is one of the very successful graduate schools of the excellence initiative of the German federal government and has a 8 years of experience in organizing “soft skill” courses for PhD students. SGBM will provide a two-day course on project management in which the students will structure, plan, control and document a project, identify and manage risks of the project, and learn to inform and collaborate constructively with other stakeholders in a project.
The SGBM (UFR) will also provide a half day workshop with individual follow-up on career coaching in which students will reflect on career possibilities and learn to become aware of their own skills and the skills asked for in academic and non-academic environments, how to translate their skills to different work areas and to elaborate career options.
The EN-ACTI2NG network will organize three annual meetings, organized by TUW & MUW, UKK & UWÜ and LUMC in which the students, PIs and partners will present and discuss their advances and plans. Local visiting researchers will be invited to provide lectures on topics related and/or complementary to the EN-ACTI2NG research program. Furthermore, UFR will organize an international immunology meeting. The EN-ACTI2NG network will act as a co-organizer of that meeting and the students will be asked to propose and invite two speakers, teaching them how to organize a big meeting and giving them the opportunity to interact and establish contacts with leading immunologists from Europe, the USA and Asian countries.
A five-day super-resolution fluorescence microscopy lecture/hands-on course will be held at TUW and MUW where students will be taught on the working principles and applications of high-end super-resolution microscopy concepts using PALM and STORM techniques, single molecule tracking and monitoring of live cell antigen receptor signaling on samples provided either by the students themselves or by the organizers.
A four-day course, organized by LUMC and UBR, will train the PhD students to visualize, identify and isolate antigen specific T cells by different techniques e.g. flow cytometry, high throughput MHC-multimer enrichments, and functional testing of T cells. Furthermore, the basic principles of TCR gene therapy will be explained.
A four day workshop, organized by FIMA, will train the student in the selection of aptamers through SELEX and on their therapeutic applications especially with regard to cancer immuno-therapy.
A three-day workshop will be organized by UWÜ and focus on ‘Bench to Bedside – bringing research findings into the clinic’. Participants will learn how clinical trials are prepared and conducted, and learn about the regulatory framework surrounding clinical trials in T-cell therapy. The course will include sessions at the UWÜ GMP facility and early clinical trial unit (ECTU Phase I) where they can get an inside scoop on how cell therapy products are manufactured, administered and monitored.
IMM will provide a workshop on collaborative research between academic and non-academic partners and explain the concepts and design of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and Standard Operation Procedures (SOP).
The students will, in addition to learning the technical and conceptual approaches applied during the development of their project in their home laboratories and the laboratories providing their secondments, be taught in a progressive fashion the basic but crucial skills to correctly record their data, present them to their supervisor and fellow laboratory members, present them in departmental seminars, institute retreats, poster sessions or workshops, to design, plan and interpret their own experiments, to incorporate the data from the relevant scientific literature in their research projects and to write a report (article draft/thesis draft/fellowship proposal) based on their own data.