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 have 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.

Campus+ learning content is now available via Platform Plus. The platform allows users to register for upcoming webinars, access previous learning content, and learn their curiosity index.

Please watch the Platform Plus introduction video to understand the process of registration and access to the system.

This program will provide guidance and assistance to researchers planning to submit nationally competitive grant applications, with focus on ARC Discovery Projects, DECRA and Linkage, as well as NHMRC Ideas and 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 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.

The following workshops are scheduled as a part of CGSP 2024:

Applicants interested in submitting category 1 funding application are required to submit an Funding Expression of Interest (FEOI) 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. ECRs include all researchers (casuals, fixed term and permanent staff) up to and including Level B, who completed their PhD 5-7 years ago. This excludes career interruptions such as non-research employment, part-time status, personal leave (for example carers or maternity leave).

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.

The ECR Seed Funding program aims to provide opportunities for Early Career Researchers (and mid-career researchers with career interruption), without a strong history of applying for external competitive research funding opportunities, to develop the skills in building research teams, writing grant proposals, undertaking funded research and successfully delivering research outcomes.

Each grant supports project costs up to a maximum of $10,000 for an initial duration of 7 months (June to December).

Applications are now closed.

Successful applicants - Reporting

Successful grant applicants are required to submit a final report, outlining the grant outcomes and achievements, within one month of project completion.

Please download and complete the ECR Seed Funding - Report template (docx. 152kb).

Final report due no later than 28th February 2025.

Submit the Final Report, via email, to researcher.development@federation.edu.au.

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.

Competitive Grant Support Program 2024

Are you thinking of an ARC funding application this year or in near future or are you simply curious to learn more about ARC grants?

The Federation University Competitive Grant Support Program (CGSP) aimed at supporting category 1 funding applications is now underway.  For more information, or to register interest in participating and be put on the workshop mailing list, please email researcher.development@federation.edu.au.

International Conference for Early Academics and Researchers, New Zealand, December 2024

ICEAR, The International Conference for Early Academics and Researchers (https://www.icearconference.com/), is a new conference by ECRs for ECRs in Auckland this December.

ICEAR is an opportunity to put your career in focus. Sessions will encourage you to reflect on the actions you can take now to establish yourself in a career that will sustain you. Through presentations, workshops, conversations, and provocations, the conference themes explore:

* Interdisciplinary collaboration
* Research Impact
* Entrepreneurial research
* Networking/community-building
* Platforming underrepresented knowledge-systems

This is a first-of-its-kind opportunity for postgraduate and early-career researchers to network with global peers from across disciplines at a large-scale, 3-day catered conference.

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.