Complementary skills courses are offered as part of the normal degree programmes of the participating academic institutions the ESRs are all involved in, as for example:
• ESR1 and ESR10 took a French language course from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, year 2013/14,
• ESR3 attended an ‘Introduction to the Finnish Language’ Course from the University of Oulu, spring term 2014,
• ESR4 will attend a ‘Python 3: Introduction for those with programming experience’ course and a ‘C++: programming in C++’ course from Cambridge University from month 21,
• ESR5 attended a ‘Writing professional English’ course, as well as a ‘English presentation skills’ course from the Comenius University, year 2013/14,
• ESR8 will attend a Dutch language course from month 21,
• ESR9 attended a ‘German language course for beginners’ from ETH Zürich, year 2013/14.
A network-wide complementary training took place on month 21 at Cambridge University. A two-hour hands-on tutorial on how to write, edit a scientific paper and get it published presented by Guy Jones, Deputy Director for the RSC’s Inorganic chemistry journals (including Energy & Environmental Science, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, and Nanoscale).
As part of the communication skills we wish our fellows to gain, most of them already presented posters at different international conferences.
To assess the level of complementary skills training, fellows filled in a form early 2015. This will help understanding fellows needs and wishes, and lead to a more targeted and efficient training in this regard.