IoO Early Career Researchers (ECR) Committee

• The annual IoO ECR symposium – our flagship event to celebrate the hard work of all ECRs at the institute in the form of oral and poster presentations, held in June/July. The event is open to all staff and it's a great opportunity to practise presenting work in a more formal setting and to engage with other research at the IoO.
• IoO ECR Lates – a more relaxed, evening event with short talks followed by pizza and a trip to the pub. Talks can be on your research or something else, but the emphasis is on having fun and practising presentation skills.
• Careers outside academia – monthly seminars from scientists who left academia in pursuit of something new. These are an interesting insight into what else is out there and what industries or companies may be interested in employing highly skilled individuals such as our ECRs.
• Meet the Directors – Got questions about the running of IoO? Or just want to get to know the directors a bit better? This is the perfect chance to ‘ask anything’, usually with Andrew Dick, Allison Hardcastle, Wing-Chau Tung and other IoO Directors. 
• The festival of early-stage researchers – Formally known as ‘Postdoc appreciation week’, this UCL wide event is usually held over a week in January. Look out for specific events at IoO and also those open to all UCL ECRs.

Help with statistics is one of the most common requests we have for new events to run at IoO. We do our best to provide help and resources so keep an eye out for emails from the ECR committee for details of any upcoming events. Below are some free online resources that may be of interest if you are struggling with statistics or just want a refresher of some basics:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5698693/#b5
  Gives a good description of types of test to be used in basic science research
  and more clinical research. Covers different types of data, sample sizes and
  power calculations.
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5121512/
  Similar to above but includes some worked examples and decision chart to select the appropriate type of test. 
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128047255000033
  covers everything from sample size calculations, identifying the correct test, p-hacking. 

• https://www.coursera.org/learn/stanford-statistics
  General introduction to statistical concepts and methods.
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/clinical-trials
  How to design clinical trials and analyse the resulting data 
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/responsible-data-analysis
  Population health data analysis 
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/probability-statistics
  Focus on understanding probability and statistics – may be less focused on biological/biomedical area 
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/improving-statistical-questions
  Statistical and mathematical tools to better plan experiments. 
• https://www.udacity.com/course/data-analysis-with-r--ud651
  More about learning to program but very useful if you plan to do a lot of repetitive analysis or have large data sets to visualise – the course is by Facebook and uses an example dataset 
• https://www.udacity.com/course/statistics--st095
  another general statistics course
• https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/learning-development/learning-academy/researcher-development/introducing-inkpath/getting-started
  Postgraduate research students are also encouraged to access statistics courses and training via the Doctoral Skills Development Programme. Students can register on UCL DocSkills courses via Inkpath

• The faculty ECR pages have lots of useful links and information about wider ECR resources. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-sciences/research/early-career-researchers
• UCL Doctoral school has lots of useful info for PhD and MD students. https://www.grad.ucl.ac.uk/
• Vitae is an online careers resource for researchers with help on networking, CVs, career progression and more. You need to sign up, but it is free to use. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/
• UCL careers provide services such as courses, practise interviews, help with CVs and applications. Check out their web pages and sign up for the weekly email to find out more. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/
• UCL HR has pages for Researcher Development, with links for both staff and students to help improve researcher outcomes for those working or studying at UCL. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/learning-development/learning-academy/researcher-development
• The University and College Union (UCU) supports university staff in areas such as equality, pay and contracts. More information can be found on their UCL web pages. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucu/

The IoO runs a successful mentoring programme, if you are interested in getting involved lookout for emails or email Maryse Bailey for more information.