The evolutionary and mechanistic basis of virus host shifts (360G-Wellcome-109356_Z_15_C)

For researchers aspiring to building their own research group, most enter into doing so with no formal training on how to run and manage a research team. This is a particularly daunting prospect if there are few senior role models to relate to, and underrepresented groups are particularly likely to leave research as early career researchers. This highlights the need to support early career researchers in overcoming barriers to successfully establishing their own groups and long-term research careers. We will run a leadership workshop to provide early career researchers with the skills required to set up and manage an independent research group. The workshop will be used to identify the challenges facing early career researchers in our department and approaches to overcome these issues, in order to reduce the loss of underrepresented groups at these career stages. The knowledge and skills acquired will be used to develop resources to better enable individuals to overcome these barriers. Course participants will produce an open access toolkit to allow participants to share what they have learned with the wider research community. We will also produce a more bespoke guide to assist early career researchers setting up their own groups in our department, and will run workshops, support networks and a mentoring scheme for early career researchers establishing their own groups.