On the road to more empowered scientists at CiQUS

Science is exciting. In professional terms, generating knowledge and being part of scientific progress is certainly highly rewarding. But the path is tough: science operates in a highly competitive environment, where stress and uncertainty are commonplace. Instead of simply ignoring it, the best way to deal with this issue is to make it visible and find the right tools to tackle the problem. To develop a successful career, we must first strengthen ourselves as individuals.

Empowering Women in Science (online, july 5-7) has been CiQUS´s pioneering effort in this topic, because science moves forward as long as there is mental health. A total of 12 participants attended this workshop, including members of CiQUS and CiMUS. At the end of the workshop, the feedback was excellent. ThePaperMill trainers led the sessions successfully, working together on practical proposals and emphasizing interaction between the participants.

The activities covered a range of topics of particular interest in the field of emotional intelligence. Participants developed a deeper understanding of how they relate to themselves and others in a group, learned to identify inherited gender roles and discovered the traps of their own unconscious biases and self-limiting beliefs. The workshop aimed to gain greater self-belief and greater confidence, and provide some useful tools for dealing with the common challenges faced by researchers.

Empowering Women in Science is part of a training programme implemented at CiQUS to strengthen careers and incorporate trained talent to science and society. The programme is aimed to all CiQUS researchers from PhD candidates to postdoctoral researchers, senior scientists and PIs, and provides transversal skills and competences to boost their scientific careers. Among the workshops held this year: scientific writing, competitive funding, intellectual property rights for chemists or career guidance.