Are you unsure about how to bring order in the extensive program of the General Assembly? Are you wondering how to tackle this week of science? Are you curious about what EGU and the General Assembly have to offer? Then this is the short course for you!

During this coursee, we will provide you with tips and tricks on how to handle this large conference and how to make the most out of your week at this year's General Assembly. We'll explain the EGU structure, the difference between EGU and the General Assembly, we will dive into the program groups and we will introduce some key persons that help the Union function.

Feel free to join us, we are looking forward to meeting you!

The European Geosciences Union is a the largest Geoscientific Union in Europe, largely run by volunteers. Perhaps you have been to the General Assembly before, maybe you have published in one of the EGU journals, or are you following EGU and/or several EGU divisions on social media.

Whatever your closest link with EGU, would you like to get involved?

This short course is aimed at Early Career Scientists and will provide an overview of all the activities of EGU, which are much more than just the General Assembly. We will give practical tips on how to get involved, who to contact and where to find specific information if you want to organise a event.

More than 50% of EGU's members consist of ECS, let's get active!

Recent publications show that many people working in academia experience mental health issues. Factors like job insecurity, limited amount of time and poor management often cause high stress levels and can lead to mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety or emotional exhaustion. Following the EGU blog series and short course ‘Mind your Head’ in 2019-2020, and the successful ECS Great Debate at the General Assembly in 2019, we aim to continue the dialogue and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness.

In this short course we invite panelists to share their experiences, how they dealt with it and what support they received. Afterwards we aim to actively engage the audience to discuss how to take control of their mental wellbeing and prioritise it in the current academic environment. We invite people from all career stages and disciplines to come and join us for this short course.

COVID-19 has affected our daily lives in an unprecedented range of ways. It is a human, economic and social crisis that has potentially changed the way we live, work and interact with each other forever. Researchers have not been spared from this, facing numerous challenges since the start of the outbreak, both personal and professional. This session will focus on a couple of these challenges in detail and discuss the lessons that we can learn to strengthen the scientific community and research in the future.

The first challenge that this session will address is the impact COVID-19 has had on research activities directly. Since the introduction of lockdowns in Europe, many researchers have had to reduce their research activities due to additional responsibilities at home while others have been locked out of laboratories and libraries, of all kinds, or been unable to undertake fieldwork to collect primary data. This has not only impacted the careers of many scientists but also led to project goals becoming unachievable, issues with funding and PhD candidates unable to complete their research. In this short course we will look at what can be done on an individual level to improve the current situation that many researchers find themselves in.

In addition to the financial, structural difficulties, many researchers are starting to view the way that they do science as more flexible than they might have considered possible before the coronavirus outbreak. This short course will also make space for discussions about how the practicalities of doing research (be it infrastructure, work patterns or styles of employment) could change in the light of what we have learned during this challenging time. We will also ask the question ‘how can large organisations and institutions attempt to better prepare in case another global crisis arises in the future?’

The European Research Council (ERC) is a leading European funding body supporting excellent investigator-driven frontier research across all fields of science. ERC calls are open to researchers around the world. The ERC offers various different outstanding funding opportunities with grants budgets of €1.5 to €3.5 million for individual scientists. All nationalities of applicants are welcome for projects carried out at a host institution in Europe (European Union member states and associated countries). At this session, the main features of ERC funding individual grants will be presented.

Drafting your first grant proposal can be daunting. Grant writing improves with experience, so how do early career scientists compete on equal footing with those who are more established? In this short course, a panel of scientists and funding agencies will share their experience on applying to different funding bodies and provide top tips to early career scientists. You can gain insight and (even better) inspiration by discussing with the panel the bits and pieces you may struggle with when writing a strong grant proposal. This session will be followed by a ‘pop-up’ session in the Networking and ECS lounge, for more specific questions to our panel.
NOTE - this course has a broader scope than the more specific ERC and Marie Curie short courses. This course gives broad tips and hints on how to write a successful proposal irrespective of the funding body.

After the PhD, a new challenge begins: finding a position where you can continue your research or a job outside academia where you can apply your advanced skills. This task is not always easy, and frequently a general overview of the available positions is missing. Furthermore, in some divisions, up to 70% of PhD graduates will go into work outside of academia. There are many different careers which require or benefit from a research background. But often, students and early career scientists struggle to make the transition due to reduced support and networking.
In this panel discussion, scientists with a range of backgrounds give their advice on where to find jobs, how to transition between academia and industry and what are the pros and cons of a career inside and outside of academia.
In the final section of the short course, a Q+A will provide the audience with a chance to ask their questions to the panel. This panel discussion is aimed at early career scientists but anyone with an interest in a change of career will find it useful. An extension of this short course will run in the networking and early career scientist lounge, for further in-depth or one-on-one questions with panel members.

Diversity has many dimensions including, but not limited to, race/ethnicity, gender, disability status, nationality, language, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. Diversity is key for scientific progress and society because different perspectives and life experiences give rise to diversity in scientific questions and approaches to address them, and stimulate collaboration between academics and local communities. Nevertheless, geosciences remain the least diverse of all STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
In this short course, early career scientists will be presented with practical advice on how they can contribute to promoting diversity in both their present and future career stages and help to build a geoscience community that is welcoming and supporting to marginalized scientists.

The short course will consist of the following invited talks, followed by discussion with the speakers:

(1) Asmeret Asefaw Berhe: "Forms of diversity and how can early career scientists support it"

(2) Bala Chaudhary: "Building an anti-racist lab"

(3) Budiman Minasny: "The fair-play of scientific collaborations - beyond helicopter research"

Scientists of all career stages are welcome to participate and join the discussions!

Bullying and discrimination within academia are widespread and impact science at all levels. Early Career Scientists of underprivileged and underrepresented groups are those most affected by such work environments. Thus, discriminatory work environments further contribute to the continued lack of diversity within the geosciences, ultimately hampering scientific advancement. Systemic power dynamics within academia lead to the fear of retaliation and the impunity of professors, which is why culprits get away with abuse far too often. Despite increased discussions about this topic, institutions tend to provide little or ineffective support for those affected, nor clear steps forward. In this interactive short course, an expert panel will (i) provide practical recommendations on how to combat discriminatory work environments and (ii) explain strategies for bystander intervention. This will be followed by an open discussion between the expert panel and all participants about how to battle discriminatory work environments in the geosciences.
This Short Course is a joint effort of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group of EGU, the Young Hydrologic Society and EGU.
With Prof. Dr. Aradhna E. Tripati, Prof. Dr. Erika Marin-Spiotta, Dr. Anjana Khatwa and Dr. Moses Milazzo we have a great panel consisting of a diverse group of experts and ambassadors for more diversity and equity within the geosciences.

Careers in academia exist beyond research and publications. There are always aspects more than what meets the eye. Often, we tend to learn about what is made available and evident, leaving behind many questions. It is only natural for aspiring scientists to have questions that shape their minds and impact their research. Some questions pertain to professional realms, others may relate to more broader perspectives on ambitions, inspirations, and what one deems as meaningful. Not every day do we get the opportunity to present these floating concerns at a forum and have experts address and pay heed to the same. In this session, a successful scientist with many years of experience will provide a look back to give a personal perspective of her/his career.

This year, we have the absolute pleasure of having with us Professor Todd A. Ehlers, who is an all-round geologist, head of the Earth Surface Dynamics group at the University of Tuebingen, Germany. Todd’s work has been contributing to better understand how tectonic, climatic and biogenic forces interact and drive landscape evolution, using an ensemble of techniques such as thermochronology, cosmogenic nuclides, numerical modelling, near-surface geophysics. Besides his research expertise, we shall engage in conversations regarding the challenges that came his way, and the manner in which he overcame those, and how his research shaped his life and in turn, how his life is impacted by the research he does. The discussions shall offer a unique opportunity to learn and empathise with a scholar’s work and life that has inspired many. The session shall conclude with the prospect of questions that Todd shall be happy to answer.

Over the last decades, research in the Solar-Terrestrial sciences has greatly advanced our understanding of this huge and complex system. For half a century, satellites and a continuously growing network of ground-based observatories have allowed us to make observations in more remote regions of the Sun-Earth system and with higher precision than ever before. Besides, high-performance computing has enabled the development of powerful numerical models, which gives us an unprecedented insight into each level of solar-terrestrial couplings. As new space missions and breakthroughs in numerical simulations fill in today’s missing pieces of knowledge, new questions arise, that need to be tackled by new thoughts. Being an Early Career Scientist, it is often hard to identify which questions are new and what has been answered before. In this short course, we have invited a panel of renowned researchers. They will give their view on how far we have come in our understanding, and most importantly, on what open questions and challenges lie ahead for the young scientists to embark upon. This is an excellent opportunity to meet with the experts and discuss the future of our community. The target audience is students and early-career scientists who want to increase their awareness of current and future research challenges within solar-terrestrial sciences and to discuss their potential contributions. The audience is invited to propose specific topics and/or questions for discussion in advance to ecs-st@egu.eu.

How do you peer-review? Apparently you are just supposed to miraculously know. Many of us never receive formal training in peer review, yet our peer-reviews are the cornerstone of scientific legitimacy. Constructive, respectful, coherent reviews nurture dialogue and advance research. So, how can we review papers in an efficient way? In this course, we suggest a process to help ensure that we give the authors the most useful feedback? We will hear from peer-review experts about how they go about the process and have an open discussion with the audience.

Publishing your research in a peer reviewed journal is essential for a career in research. The EGU Journals are fully open access which is great, but the open discussion can be daunting for first time submitters and early career scientists. This short course will cover all you need to know about the publication process from start to end for EGU journals, and give you a chance to ask the editors some questions. This includes: what the editor looks for in your submitted paper, how to deal with corrections or rejections, and how best to communicate with your reviewers and editors for a smooth transition from submission to publication. An open discussion will be served to give you time for questions to the editors,and for them to suggest some ‘top tips’ for a successful publication. This course is aimed at early-career researchers who are about to step into the publication process, and those who are yet to publish in EGU journals. Similarly, this course will be of interest to those looking to get involved in the peer-review process through reviewing and editing.

Writing a scientific paper is an essential part of research, and is a skill that needs practice.

This session is organized in cooperation with the Young Hydrologic Society (http://younghs.com/).