The BioInspired Graduate & Postdoctoral Professional Development Program is excited to announce the launch of the Spring 2025 workshop series on Project Management, a valuable set of skills for scientists and engineers in the lab or any professional setting. Scientists and engineers routinely use aspects of project management without even realizing it, but these skillsets can be honed and used intentionally to enhance the successful execution of experiments, writing projects, and collaborative efforts. Besides helping you more thoughtfully navigate your current projects at Syracuse, project management is an important, marketable skillset for future employment.
In the first workshop in our series, we discussed the fundamentals of project management, mostly framed around the traditional “waterfall” project methodology. These foundational concepts are important for practicing scientists and engineers, but the linear waterfall framework does not typically offer enough flexibility for the fast-paced, changeable realities of discovery-based, innovative projects like research and technology development. Thus, the last two decades have seen the emergence of project management methodologies designed to formalize processes needed to manage rapidly-evolving research and development projects. In this workshop, Jeremy Steinbacher, Director of Operations in the BioInspired Institute, will discuss the general principles around these “extreme” project frameworks as well as specific methodologies like Agile, Scrum, SAFe, and others. Though many such frameworks were created with software development in mind, they offer valuable lessons for workers conducting fundamental research.
The BioInspired Graduate & Postdoctoral Professional Development Program is excited to announce the launch of the Spring 2025 workshop series on Project Management, a valuable set of skills for scientists and engineers in the lab or any professional setting. Scientists and engineers routinely use aspects of project management without even realizing it, but these skillsets can be honed and used intentionally to enhance the successful execution of experiments, writing projects, and collaborative efforts. Besides helping you more thoughtfully navigate your current projects at Syracuse, project management is an important, marketable skillset for future employment.
Project management requires the management of diverse stakeholders, often with conflicting priorities and interests. For STEM trainees, stakeholders include funding agencies, colleagues in your lab, collaborators, your advisor, and importantly, yourself. In this final installment of the project management series, Dr. Kelsey Moody, founder and CEO of Ichor Therapeutics, will discuss the management of these various stakeholders’ expectations with a specific focus on communication strategies, value generation, managing conflicting interests, and risk mitigation.
The Smart Materials Focus Group is meeting for a spring social to get the community together. We will also be discussing hiring priorities. We will be meeting in Bowne 414. Faculty and trainees are invited to attend. The event is hosted by Mary Beth Monroe and Wanliang Shan.
Please join the Smart Materials focus group for our panel on building research teams.
