DAY 1

Theme 1: Valuable skills of PhDs

PhD training cultivates many skills within a candidate. However, the skills that endure and stand out to employers are often not the technical abilities relating to each particular thesis topic. Wouldn’t it be useful to know which transferable skills are valuable for later in your careers and furthermore to discover that indeed you the member of an elite group of skilled individuals? Workshops will focus on specific skills and how to make them work for you during your PhD and how to articulate them for career planning and the future. In the Conference Book will be a validated questionnaire that all participants can fill out to gain insight on their own current skills.

DAY 2

Theme 2: Manage Your Career

The idea of strategic career planning during the PhD trajectory is at the core concept of this conference. You will have the chance to pick the brains of professionals with PhDs from academia, industry, government, alternative careers in a discussion panel. They will provide information about job and application requirements, what type of candidates their industries look for, the recruitment processes, and how to prepare and market your PhD degree for a job interview and any other questions that you can think of. A career market during the entire conference will showcase all types of opportunities and information for PhDs. In addition, all PhD conference attendees will have the opportunity to have their CV critiqued and to have a professional photograph taken for their future job applications and social medium promotion.

Theme 3: Translating Science

Interacting with information is at the very heart of research and informed researchers are both consumers and producers of information. This theme will explore the communication and transfer of scientific information from the PhD student to others. More specifically, it will focus on how to create a clear and understandable message for broad disciplined  audiences, both scientific and non-academic, through various mediums.