Faculty of Mathematics Researcher Development Programme Training 2018-2019

This session is suitable for those who are interested in understanding how our working styles can impact on time management and will cover:

• How do we work? Identifying personal time preferences and the influence of individual working styles
• The brain and its bodyclock: synchronising to our body’s master clock
• Using The Eisenhower matrix for prioritising activities
• Time stealers and ways to manage them

The aim of this course is:

• To gain a wider understanding of some of the issues around mental health for self and others
• To increase confidence to offer appropriate support to those living with mental health issues
• To experience an introduction to the topic and to the content of the full MHFA course

This workshop will offer support and practical advice for early-career researchers who wish to develop engaging and accessible presentations and activities relating their own research to the existing mathematical knowledge and understanding of school-age children and non-specialist members of the public.

Participants will have the opportunity to try out some engaging maths resources, discuss the links between school-level mathematics and mathematical research, and create their own "elevator pitch" to sum up their own research in an easy-to-understand, jargon-free way.

This workshop is particularly suitable for anyone wishing to get involved with the upcoming Cambridge Science Festival.

"Team Dynamics” are invisible forces that operate between different people or groups in a team. They can have a strong impact on how a team behaves or performs and their effects can be complex. This session will explore:

• Stages of team development: knowing what ‘time’ it is in your team
• Addressing the challenges of each stage"

A common management challenge is knowing how to get the best from people and sometimes this can seem like figuring out rocket science. This session will look at different motivations and methods to build engagement:

• Push and Pull Factors in motivation at work
• The link between engagement and motivation
• Creating a motivational climate

Resilience is becoming recognised as a defining characteristic of people who deal well with the stresses and strains of the modern workplace. This workshop will include:

• Defining resilience: what are the key elements?
• Creating a personal roadmap to build resilience and enhance well-being

In this presentation, DAMTP and DPMMS researchers who have succeeded at Fellowship applications will pass on what they know. The presentation will cover:

• Different types of funding
• How Fellowship applications work
• Guidance on writing the application
• Guidance on the interview process

This session will help you to identify the key ideas within your research that you wish to communicate, and then develop your understanding of how to use a mixture of conceptual approaches, examples and analogies to explain complex mathematical ideas to an audience with no specialist mathematical or scientific knowledge. The workshop is designed to be very practical, with the aim that you’ll come away with at least an opening and closing paragraph, and an outline for a piece of work. Participants are asked to prepare for the workshop by identifying an idea they would like to work on.

This session will aim to develop a finished piece of writing, focussing on editing and finessing a piece participants have already drafted (for those also attending the writing workshop, this can build on the piece you worked on in the writing workshop). The workshop will involve practical exercises that can be used to improve a piece of writing. The workshop will include time to work individually and in groups redrafting existing work. The aim is to come to the workshop with a draft, and leave the workshop with a finished piece of writing.