Survival Skills for Scientists

Survival Skills for Scientists

In this lecture, Prof. Federico Rosei will try to convey a feeling for the course on “Survival Skills for Scientists” 1. This is a graduate course designed and developed at the Institute national de la recerche Scientifique (Varennes, CANADA) where Prof. Rosei works. In this course basic advice and mentorship are offered to graduate students and post-docs.
The central theme of this presentation is that succeeding in Science requires skills (often referred to as ‘soft professional skills’) beyond those needed for Science.
The lecture aims at giving basic guidance and mentoring to young scientists (typically science and engineering undergraduate and first year graduate students).
The main topics are:

• The job market for graduates in science and engineering (industry, national labs and academia; advantages and disadvantages)
• Funding in modern science
• Publish or perish; publishing quality papers, having an impact
• Presenting your work to your peers
• The fundamental laws of ‘scientific survival’ (know yourself, plan ahead, and play chess)
• Ethics in modern science
• Alternative careers

Date: June 28, 2010 - 10 A.M.

Venue: "Aula Magna" - Faculty of Letters

Click here to follow the seminar on internet.

Slides of the presentations are available here.

1F. Rosei, T.W. Johnston, “Survival Skills for Scientists”, Imperial College Press (2006)

Professor Federico Rosei holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanostructured Organic and Inorganic Materials, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Université du Québec, Varennes (QC) Canada. He received MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1996 and 2001, respectively.

Dr. Rosei’s research interests focus on the properties of nanostructured materials, and on how to control their size, shape, composition, stability and positioning when grown on suitable substrates.

He has extensive experience in fabricating, processing and characterizing inorganic, organic and biocompatible nanomaterials.

He has published about 100 articles in prestigious international journals (including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nanoletters, Small, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review B, etc.), has been invited to speak at over 100 international conferences and has given over 120 seminars and colloquia in 33 countries on all inhabited continents.

His publications have been cited over 1500 times and his H index is 21.

He has received several awards, including the FQRNT Strategic Professorship (2002–2007), the Tan Chin Tuan visiting Fellowship (NTU 2008), the Senior Gledden Visiting Fellowship (UWA 2009), Professor at Large at UWA (2010–2012), a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the European Union (2001) and a Canada Research Chair since 2003 (renewed in 2008 for a second five year term).