Dr Louise Natrajan louise.natrajan@manchester.ac.uk

1. Dr Louise Natrajanlouise.natrajan@manchester.ac.uk Establishing a research career at the research group level

2. Who am I? What do I do? • EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow: • School of Chemistry • The University of Manchester • Team Leader… • I have a group of 12 researchers built up over 5 years (4 PDRA’s and 12 PhD’s) • Primarily research focused: limited teaching, organise external seminars • 2013 awarded a £1 million Leverhulme leadership award (group expanding!)

3. My Background • 2003 PhD- Inorganic Chemistry, University of Nottingham • 2004 PDRA, CEA, Grenoble, France • 2005-2008 PDRA, University of Manchester • 2009-2014 EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow • 2013-present Reader in Chemistry

4. Why an EPSRC CAF Fellowship? • Applied for ~ 5 lectureships in yrs 3-4 of PDRA • Timeliness: right stage in my career and right time in my field of research (nuclear). The only person for the job! • Ideal way to establish myself as a world class leader in my chosen area of research in 5 years • Less pressures of applying for additional research grants (comes with equipment, consumables, travel, PhD studentships and PDRA’s). Be realistic with costs • Freedom and opportunity to establish international collaborations

5. What I did: • Attended EPSRC presentations • Mock Panel interview-good insight into panel assessment • Sought advice and help from my supervisor and colleagues • Worked on my track record: • Publications, lead authorship (13 papers, 9 lead, 11 written/co-written) • Presentations, conferences, invited seminars/lectures • Develop potential collaborators (use the people you already know) • Teaching and management experiences • Opportunity to sell yourself, not just your ideas Don’t just limit yourself to one fellowship application

6. 1st step: Outline proposal Read guidelines carefully • 2 pages: convey main idea and work strategy • Identify strategic area if possible • Interdisciplinary • Energy • Healthcare • Nanotechnology • Digital economy • Track record -number of lead author publications • -summary of work and collaborations

7. In Summary: Applying for Funding • Believe in yourself and your research ideas this will then come across in the proposal and interview • Talk to as many people as possible, including anyone you may know at the EPSRC-understand their point of view of the fellowship procedure

8. Current Responsibilities/Skills • Management of research group • Responsible for writing grant proposals/high impact publications • Teaching… • Core skills: • People, project and time management • Networking • Imaginative (cutting edge ideas) • No additional training required but might be useful…

9. Likes/Dislikes? Everyday challenges, opportunities, and rewards of being an academic: • Likes: • Flexibility of working hours • Ability to develop my own ideas • Working with a young, enthusiastic group • Dislikes: • Lack of time to spend with my group/working on ideas!! • Administrative jobs-being out of the lab

10. Maintaining/Measuring Success • Approach to setting up a research group? Apply for a wide variety of grants • Developing a research strategy? Initially more than one research area, continued PDRA work-new direction • How I respond to the research environment? Talk to as many (young) people as possible • How I measure impact in my work? Invited talks, collaborations, journal citations • How I see myself as a leader?/plan for the future?

11. When all else fails… …If there’s only ONE piece of advice you could give to students, what would it be? • Don’t let anything or anyone put you off applying for things, you never know… ! • i.e. don’t see anything as a failure, just a different path