Staff & career development

CTLS June 5th 2014 / Duclaux Auditorium

Thanks to Liz, we wrote the minutes of the session "Staff & career development".

Part of the topics have been discussed again at the satellite meeting.

Reed more.

Benchmarking, using this as a mode of career development

Establish a matrix description of technical roles

Would it be useful for CTLS to provide template technical job descriptions? Or share what institutions currently have.

Would it be useful to have an agreed benchmarking scheme for core facilities ?

MPI tried to do this, but found it difficult to find the common denominators for benchmarking.

Would be useful to have this in the long term.
Best laboratory practice already exisits and benchmarking could come from this.

Efficiency and quality could be tracked, with processes as sub-categories.

International Society for Flow Cytometry is working to define standards on best practice.

A recognition programme aimed at improving core facilities.

Create a repository of good practice for inspiration to others.

CTLS could establish working groups in different technology areas to define standards in these areas.

Self-assesment preferable to acreditation.

What is next? Once a successful facility has been established, what is the next career step ?

No major concern about career path.

Why should technicians go forward fo a PhD ?
Progression is easier with a PhD, and more opportunities open up.
Knowledge and skills required need to match-up.

The type of contract technical staff are employed on can restrict their research activities.

Core Technology for Life Science

An inspiring meeting and a great community!

Notes from the CTLS Initiative Open Discussion June 5 2014

by Herbert Auer

The numbers in brackets show how often this was suggested

Roles and functions of a future CTLS association:

Lobbying, represent core facilities on a higher level (2x)

Standardization of methods, strengthen quality of research (2x)

Include non-life science (2x)

Exclude non-life science (1x)

Define value of membership to institution (1x)

Be pan-european with associates from outside (2x)

Format of future conferences:

A core meeting with satellite meetings of different science areas (1x)

Types of membership in the future association:

Core (institutional) membership (2x)

Individual membership (1x)

Core and individual membership (2x)

Start with individual, add later core (institution) membership. Mission will decide about type of membership (1x)

CTLS future questions:

Will it be life science only?

Involve Contract Research Organizations?

Work in collaboration with ABRF

Work in collaboration with Core4Life?

The CTLS entity:

1 president, 1 treasurer, 1 secretary

Executive board of 10-15 members, open to institutions worldwide

Next conference candidates:

Lisbon (Rui)

Madrid (Fernando)

Erlangen (Ralf)

Newcastle (Armin?)

EMBL ?

Elena Trovesi volunteered to help with the organization

Administrative Support & Managment Skills

All Participants agreed on having a platform where we can share our expertise, success and failures as weel as ask questions and ultimately get an answer!

This session is meant to summarize the outcome of the satellite meeting.

Guide line

Career development

Workshops

PR, marketing, promotion

Funding support

Guide Line

 We would like to share expertise and failures and eventually come up with a "Guide line".

How to set up a Core Facility

Define standards on best practice

International Society for Flow Cytometry is working to define standards on best practice.

A recognition programme aimed at improving core facilities.

  Lab management

How to deal with tender and procurement and merged administrative requirment and lab needs.

  Policis and procedures

Career development

  Core Facility Leader's job description

What do we expect the CFL to do?

We would like to set up a benchmarking scheme for core facility leaders.

TA qualification

More from Kelly Vere coming soon.....

Career path

There was not major concern about defening a career path of a CFL.

Instead, we had a considerable discussion about qualification for TA, whateher having a PhD.

Workshops

Administrative and Financial topic

Elena Trovesi organizes Workshops twice a year at different research institutes.

In-house workshops can also be organized.

Go to Core Vision in Science | Workshop

  Lab management

How to deal with tender, procurment, administrative requirment and lab need.

  PR, marketing, promotion

 To reach a self-sustainable infrastructure, we need to promote our facilities. We need to advertise our activities to external users, including companies.

Core facility leaders may not have neither the expertise nor the skills.

What is the most appropriate and efficient model?

Professionals promoters may be hired at the institutional level or may be dedicated to one facility.

Funding Support

  INFRASUPP-3-2014

 Deadline Date 2014-09-02

Scope: The activity will support the training of staff managing and operating research infrastructures. A proposal under this topic should build on the past activities and the experience gained in the projects such as RAMIRI (Realising and Managing International Research Infrastructures). It should engage with universities and prepare curricula and courses specifically for pan-European research infrastructures to address their intercultural and interdisciplinary nature as well as their diversity (global, highly distributed, single site etc.). A significant use of interactive online training material should be considered.

Expected impact:  This activity will improve and professionalise the training of the staff managing and operating research infrastructures of European interest, strengthen the human capital of the involved research infrastructures, stimulating their efficient management and therefore promoting their development and competitiveness at national, European and international level.