2015 events

At the inaugural December 2015 event, 60 ECR researchers from universities and research institutes attended two professional development workshops to build their communication and engagement skills:

• Leveraging social media for career progression - Dr Maggie Hardy from The University of Queensland
• Communicating your science clearly - Econnect Communication.

Following the workshop, the ECRs were joined by industry representatives and more of their colleagues from the scientific community for a number of short presentations from organisations that had worked on projects with researchers.

The City of Gold Coast Council and a local business owner spoke about how collaboration with research inspired innovation that led to new product development and solutions to business challenges.

At the end of the presentations, more than 100 attendees participated in a structured networking event. Small groups of up to 5 people worked together to come up with an engagement, communication or research project. The activity was designed to encourage collaboration across disciplines and between researchers from various universities and research institutes, and with industry representatives.

Successful projects:

• Maximising stakeholder engagement on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR): What can we learn from the health sciences?
• From human swelling to sugar cane: Bioimpedance Testing for Agricultural Applications?
• Building a website to facilitate collaboration between research, industry and government professionals.
• Microplastic Marine Debris: Public Awareness Online Media Campaign

The workshop was repeated in January due to an oversubscription at the December 2015 workshops.