News from the MCAA

Top sessions at the MCAA General Assembly and Annual Conference

Hello, my name is Mostafa Moonir Shawrav. I am a current Vice-Chair of MCAA and leading the organisation of the sixth MCAA General Assembly & Annual Conference in Vienna. More than 24 parallel sessions have been planned for this year’s event and I am pleased to share some of these with you. I hope this will encourage you to check out other sessions from the website and to join the event.

CAREER PATHS FOR RESEARCHERS

As a researcher, you often pick up valuable transferable skills that are essential for jobs outside academia. This session, as well as the planned panel discussion, will inspire participants to develop transferrable skills for future jobs.

DIFFERENTLY ABLED RESEARCHERS

The session will delve into the needs and strengths of differently abled researchers. It will shed light on their daily and exceptional efforts, and emphasise the important role that institutions, such as local and national associations, can play. The necessity of legislation to secure compensation and provide the means for inclusion will also be stressed. The session will underline how important it is to disseminate information on this issue in order to allow and promote awareness and inclusion in society. There needs to be dialogue and exchange and efforts made from both sides to define the key steps of successful inclusion.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF A BUSINESS VENTURE

Spinning from academia to entrepreneurship can be exciting and stressful at the same time. During this session, MCAA members who have made the move will sharetheir experiences. They will also provide helpful tips to help those who are thinking about embarking on a business Odyssey of their own.

WORKPLACE HARASSMENT

Recently, we have witnessed different types of harassments in academia. For example, sexual harassments and bullying can have a long-term negative impact on one’s career and life. This session will discuss the recent issues and what can be improved at the policy level to combat and prevent harassment.

THE MENTAL HEALTH OF RESEARCHERS

Different academic entities, including MCAA, have found out through major surveys that the mental health of researchers is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed.
This session will explore how to deal with this challenging issue. The focus will be on how to become aware and implement different strategies to overcome this issue.

SCIENCE DIPLOMACY

In today’s conflicting world, science can play a crucial role to establish diplomacy or initiate dialogue between countries and vice-versa. The term is quite new, but there are already quite a few success stories of science diplomacy. This session will give an overview of the basics of science diplomacy as well as what are the future challenges and how to tackle them.

Behind the thematic “Research and Innovation beyond the Information Age”

Almost half of our members are young researchers dealing with novel innovation and the most significant new challenges of science and technology. At the same time, we are fortunate to have more than 3,500 members’ experiences of scientific research and its impact. Therefore, we can often utilize the input on the most significant or relevant issues (or both) in science to choose a theme from. We have 11 board members who discussed and decided upon a theme for the next GA.

In relevance to our event theme, looking at the contemporary research and innovation that can become game changers, we expect a paradigm shift. Over the last few decades, the introduction of information and communication technology in every part of scientific and innovation research has accelerated this transformation. We believe we have reached a point where this advancement will be elevated beyond our computational and communicative competencies. As for the future, this development must be planned, budgeted, executed and evaluated in a timely manner.

What this means is that MCAA members should try to find solutions through research and innovation for the same problems that society faces as a whole. Moreover, MCAA has committed itself to support its members in career, network, policy and entrepreneurship as an integral part of this process.

As such, this year’s theme is relevant for our members, as well as human civilisation as a whole, in various capacities.