Researcher Development

Mentoring Program is a semi structured program that combines informal mentoring sessions with formal engagement sessions. It aims to support high-potential early and mid career researchers at Federation University around their strategic career and leadership journey. It also provides current academic leaders the opportunity to develop their mentorship skills and to make a positive impact in the career of junior researchers.

Mentoring program pairs are asked to identify the parameters/intention of their mentoring relationship at the commencement of the program.  The Research Office provides material to guide this discussion, including suggested domains of focus. Mentors and mentees are asked to sign a ‘Mentoring Program Participant Agreement’ which outlines their roles and responsibilities in the program.

A common concern for researchers lies in developing the skills, profile and momentum to move from being a researcher to becoming a research leader – an expert, a skilled colleague and collaborator, a leader of teams, projects or programmes of research. Advancing your Research Career: Strategies for Research Leadership supports researchers in taking a reflective and strategic approach to developing and managing their research careers. Providing engaging, flexible and interactive training in the key capabilities that underpin successful research leadership, the programme will help to ensure that researchers’ career goals are well articulated and supported by a professional knowledge base.

Campus Plus webinars has been specifically developed to assist with the Professional Development of Researchers and Research Management/Services professional staff. Series of 20 webinars is tailored to help researchers better understand the opportunities commercialisation can bring. The end goal is to help prepare staff to access and exploit additional sources of revenue for their institution.

Each webinar is one hour in length. Recording of the webinar available for anyone who is unable to get to the live event, or who wish to review in their own time.

This program will provide guidance and assistance to researchers planning to submit nationally competitive grant applications, with an initial focus on ARC Discovery Projects, DECRA and NHMRC Ideas Grants and then Linkage Projects, and NHMRC Investigator Grants. The Program will support other schemes based on opportunity and demand. Candidates will be provided with strategic professional development workshops with successful internal and external review to address various sections of the application, professional staff assistance for application related advice, budget planning and RMS support and networking opportunities with a new community of prospective grantees.

Through the establishment of an Expert Review Panel (ERP), applicants will also be provided an opportunity to receive feedback on their drafts from senior researchers, past ARC/NHMRC and other competitive grant winners from Federation University. Panel members will review and provide feedback on EOIs and provide their expertise and knowledge across various elements of the CGSP in order to improve the overall quality and competitiveness of our funding proposals.

Applicants interested in submitting category 1 funding application are required to submit an ARC and NHMRC Grant Expression of Interest Form to the Research Services team. Academic staff with a record of successfully winning nationally competitive grant funding are invited to submit an Expression of Interest to join the Expert Review Panel.

ECR network aims to provide ECRs with opportunities to expand networks, share knowledge and access support during the early phase of research career.

The Research Impact: Creating Meaning and Value course will support researchers in:

• Defining what research impact is and why it’s important to individual researchers, groups and at institutional level.
• Planning for impact throughout a whole research project, from beginning to end – considering knowledge exchange, Theory of Change, stakeholder analysis, risk mitigation and collaboration.
• How to evidence impact and why it’s important. Thinking about accountability, responsible innovation, how to work with qualitative and quantitative data and capturing evidence.
• Developing a dissemination and engagement strategy - and identifying the difference between them. Developing skills for dissemination including writing for impact, using social media effectively, public and community engagement and promotion.
• Monitoring and evaluating impact throughout the research lifecycle: tracking progress, managing impact, evaluation methods and analysis.

Sessions facilitated by the Research Ethics, Integrity and Researcher Development Team along with Research Integrity Advisors and guest speakers. Also, professional development and training sessions for Research Integrity Advisors to brief them on policy and regulatory changes.

All Australian researchers are required to be familiar with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018). To promote and support responsible research practices, Federation University provides Research Integrity training. The training consists of a comprehensive overview of how researchers can meet their responsibilities, setting out the key principles and practices of good research conduct, and guiding learners through the lifecycle of a research project. The training details are provided in the table below.

The Researcher Development Series includes all the additional courses, seminars and workshops facilitated by the Researcher Development office as needs are identified. These may include staff presentations or sessions delivered by external experts.

Federation University Research Week is a celebration of our research accomplishments and their real-world impact. Recognizing the multifaceted nature of real-world problems, our cross-disciplinary research goes beyond conventional boundaries. Our Research Week aims to celebrate the outstanding research across the campus, promote research culture and connecting with the public through our research.

The major goals of the Research Week are to:

• Celebrate and foster a culture of research excellence
• Promote interaction between researchers, industry and community
• Provide an opportunity to showcase the University’s research
• Provide skills development opportunities to researchers

This program includes a mentorship program and 2 day writing retreat to provide time and a supportive environment for researchers to undertake writing for publication.

This program offers training in the core principles and practices of doctoral supervision to equip new and more experienced supervisors to support doctoral candidates’ development into independent researchers.

Research Grant Schemes are designed to foster an excellent research culture, develop grant application skills, promote internal and external research collaborations, provide opportunities for staff to develop new skills in research, and improve the quality of research outputs.

The applications will be reviewed, ranked and funded proposals selected, by a review panel with selection based on merit. Diversity and Inclusion considerations will apply including supporting women in research and developing early career researchers.

Applications aimed at supported the submission of competitive proposals for ARC/NHMRC will be given priority.

Full-time and Fixed-term academic researchers, Levels A-E are encouraged to apply. For fixed-term applicants the selection panel will consider the merits of the proposals with the context of their expected end date.