German Chapter Career Seminar on 28th September

Dear German Chapter Members,

The MCAA German Chapters relaunched itself with a Career Seminar on the 28th September at the TIB in Hannover. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of the speakers who took part in our event:

• Prof. Stefan Mol who spoke about how early to mid-career researchers can develop the skillset for taking leadership
• Dr. Ina Blümel and Felix Saurbier of the TIB Hannover talked about Open Science, Linked Open Data and the Open AV-Portal Project at TIB Hannover.
• Dr. Oliver Grewe is the Programme Manager of the Freigeist Fellowship of the Volkswagen Foundation. He gave our audience some insight into how a grant application is evaluated and what factors junior researchers should pay attention to when they write a proposal.
• Dr. Frauke Kersten is a Scientific Project Manager at University Eye Clinic in Bonn. She explained how she moved from completing her PhD thesis in history to making a career in research management.
• Dr. Jonathan Faiz is Senior Associate Editor at Angewandte Chemie International Edition. He described how he started working in publishing and what researchers should pay attention to when they submit an article to a journal.
• Dr. Maria Frantzi is a Society and Enterprise Panel MSCA Individual Fellow at Mosaiques Diagnostics in Hannover. She described the differences between working in academic research and working in small and medium-sized enterprises. 
• Dr. Mahsa Fatahi is working in Medical Devices Regulatory Affairs at Johnson&Johnson. She told our audience about how she was an ESR in two ITNs and chose to leave academia to make a career in the highly-paced medical devices sector.

The last session was focussed on reaching a consensus about how the German Chapter will develop in coming years. The audience responded in a most generous and creative way and I look forward to a burst of creativity from the German Chapter in coming years.

Some photos are included beneath and some more are available at the MCAA Facebook Page. Many thanks to Natalia Balcazar for taking so many excellent photos.

Finally, I would like to thank our kind and gracious host at TIB, Gábor Kismihók, without whom this event probably would not have taken place. It was a pleasure to work with him.

Warm regards,

Brian Cahill