Complementary Skills: Project Management for successful researchers

How to successfully plan and manage your PhD research work

Recommended for any year of your PHD time with MAINZ, but ideally month 6 to month 11 of your doctorate

PRE E-learning, start August 1st
Intensive 2 day workshop
Exercise based learning
14 participants maximum
9 MAINZ participants max.
5 PRISMA participants max.

26th/ 27th of September 2016
12:00 noon until 6 pm on 26th
08:30 am until 4 pm on 27th
MAINZ seminar room

This very practical course allows students to learn project management (PM) methods and tools that can be immediately applied in own research projects.

What you will learn

  • To define an innovative project
  • To establish the scheduling of (research) projects
  • To define a budget
  • To mitigate potential risks
  • To establish a communication concept
  • To lead your project successfully

How you will be able to behave after the Workshop

  • Your will possess all necessary tools to assure a positive outcome of your PhD
    project
  • You will increase the motivation and the performance of all project members
  • You will know how to plan and control an innovative research project
  • You will improve your communication with the project partners

What makes it important?
Why is Project Management (PM) named a professional competence?

  • The number of projects in and out of academia is growing exponentially
    worldwide.
  • PM is a discipline whose visibility increased tremendously during the last 30 years and that is always more required, especially in industry.
  • PM skills can be applied in any field, for professional as well as for private Projects

This will be major topics during the Workshop

This course contains an e-learning session followed by two days on-site.
The content will be the following:

  • E-Learning Session
    Basics of PM, system analysis, stakeholder analysis, project objectives, project structure
  • On-site Day 1
    Planning the project, risk management, searching for a Sponsor
  • On-site Day 2
    Project controlling, project organization, communication, Kick-Off meeting,
    PM success factors

For the blended e-learning session, each participant will get access to five videos (30’
each) that will have to be viewed independently. The participants will then have to prepare the system and stakeholder analysis of their own research project, to define their project objectives and to structure their project in order to get their first project plan, as instructed. This knowledge will allow the participants to plan more into detail their project during the on-site session.

During the two on-site days, we will continue our “travel” in the other topics of project management. We will see how to plan the research work, how to define the project costs and how to mitigate risks. We will also simulate the search for funding.

During the last day, we will see how to control the execution of a research work. Since communication is playing a central role in projects, we will spend time looking at the different roles and responsibilities, and how we should communicate in projects.

How you will be working during the Workshop - Workshop Framework

  • Throughout the workshop, professional input from the trainer will alternate with
    practical written exercises and group discussions of relevant issues. There will be
    plenty of room for your questions and you will be working on own real publishing
    projects.
  • The basics of project management targeted to PhD students, as well as methods
    and tools will be presented and illustrated by examples and deepened in various
    personal and group exercises.
  • Participants will have to share experiences from their own research projects

Who should attend - Workshop Participants

  • No prior knowledge of project management is required for this course.
    Nevertheless, the participants should more or less know their research
    environment
    (people involved and research topic). This is generally the case
    after 6 months of research work.
  • During the workshop, participants will be required to bring project examples,
    issues and problems, which are of interest to other scientists. Procedures and
    working methods applied in this course require participants to tackle problems in
    depth and to show an interest for the questions and needs of the other
    participants.

Your trainer – Profile + Experiences

  • Dr. Carine Galli Marxer studied Physics in Switzerland and Germany (1998), has
    a postgraduate master in teaching as well as in Project Management (MAS).
  • During her career, she never stopped exploring new topics in interdisciplinary and intercultural environments, successfully leading innovative projects: PhD work about bio-implants and biosensors (CH), Postdoc about cell membranes (USA), Project manager of a EU research project in surface science (CH), Program manager of the Swiss Knowledge and Technology Transfer Initiative (CH), Project manager of a new Swiss strategic project in the field of radioprotection in medicine (CH).
  • Since 2011 she is training researchers to successfully manage and/or supervise
    projects.
  • More under www.gallimarxer-pm.ch