"I was interested in becoming an assistant supervisor, so I went on the PhD Supervisor training. Components of that training touch on your ability to recognize mental health situations, to be able to support learning, to be able to direct people towards where they can find resources, to help them along the way and to allow people to be able to explore their research topics. I think that training really helped me in terms of my thinking when I became a manager, and I had quite a few line reports, in being able to help people think around their own development and fashion their own path to achieve it. That really helped me in terms of working to develop others."
- Dr Julia Makinde, Benevolent AI (former Postdoc in the Department of Infectious Diseases) 

Find out more about Assistant Supervisor’s training 

"One of the things that I was very keen to was to be part of the UK Society for Extracellular Vesicles. This is an academic body that supports researchers in the UK, but it has strong international links.

They set up a mentorship program where researchers at different levels are connected to students at different levels. As a postdoc and someone who's just at the next stage on the career pathway I was able to mentor, as best I could, a PhD student. She's working on very different projects and it's very interesting learn about that and share my experiences and try, where I could, to say some of the things I've done well and not so well in different aspects of my career.

I found that was quite positive and hopefully in some very small way, but hopefully a positive way, give back to the community. Also, a previous student that I’d had a few years ago just reached out and said ‘Oh, I think your research is very interesting’ so we just had a Skype chat. I thought this seems like an intelligent and enthusiastic student so let's help them. I think that was positive, and not something that I was necessarily expected to do, but I'm a big believer in doing this."
- Dr Richard Kelwick, Postdoc in the Department of Infectious Disease 

Find out about:

• Mentoring at Imperial
• Mentor training at Imperial
• Also consider mentoring schemes from learned societies and professional bodies

In any career or sector you work or engage with in the future, an understanding of EDI and mental health will be invaluable: not only for yourself, but in your capacity to support peers and those you manage or supervise.  Taking time to better understand and learn coping strategies will always be time well spent. 

FInd out about:

• Training in Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
• Mental Health First Aid training (MHFA)

"Imperial has a great education programme. If you want to receive an associate certification from the Higher Education Academy, they have a whole series of workshops on how to prepare for that. In the workshops they guide you on how to mentor students, supervise them, teach classes, meet different learning styles and understand how others learn."  
- Dr Pavani Cherukupally, MIT (former Postdoc in the Department of Chemical Engineering) 

Find out more about: 

• Educational Development Unit programmes and workshops 
• STAR Framework - Imperial's pathway for Advance HE fellowship recognition

Although aimed at newly appointed Research Leaders and Lecturers, this guide includes advice, guides, templates, and reflective activities that are very relevant to you as a researcher. Topics include:  

• Managing yourself and your career
• Leading your research group
• Managing research projects 

Putting time aside to work your way through information, videos and templates will count towards your 10 days’ development time. 
 
Explore the Academic’s Success Guide.

"I was a lab manager, taking care of the laboratory within our centre and I was trying to understand how I would allocate time for that compared to my work as a researcher. So, I took some courses on health and safety, emergency first aid, and even how to use a defibrillator, and giving training to students coming into the laboratory to use the equipment and so on. So that was quite useful to interact with people and talk about the different things that we were doing in our research lab."
- Dr Dorian Haci, MintNeuro (former Postdoc in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) 

Find out about:

• Safety Courses
• Towards managing your first research group - PFDC course