Research Training

Research Training

Coordinators
Isabel A. Abreu
Jörg D. Becker
Rita Lourenço Costa

Syllabus

The main goal of this curricular unit (CU) is to expose the students to the scientific method, as a formalization of critical thinking, while guiding the student to acquire paper writing methodologies. This will be done through an exercise where student will be invited to use her/his own scientific results to write a formal paper. The paper will be revised in a “peer review”-like process by two of the CU coordinators and the findings will be discussed in a private section between the student, the CU coordinators, and the program coordinator. The student will also be asked to give a 20 min presentation on her/his work, followed by a 10 min public discussion. A feedback report will be handed to the student with an assessment of her/his global performance.

The CU will have the following components:

1. Tutorial on the use of critical thinking and paper writing basic techniques (1h, on the first year of the PhD program)
2. Brief discussion on the rules for the written discussion and revision of paper writing techniques, if required by the students (1h, at the end of the second year of the PhD program, one month before the deadline for the written report)
3. Evaluation: 20min public presentation of the written report, followed by a 10 min open discussion. Private discussion of the written report (30 min). The evaluation result will be approved or not approved.

In the end, the student should have been able to:

• Communicate her/his work to the scientific community
• Formalize her/his scientific research in the form of a proper (draft) publication
• Be able to defend her/his work

Main Bibliography

• http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993/writing-scientific-papers-14239285 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of Plants by B. Buchanan, W.Gruissem, R. Jones (Eds). American Society of Plant Physiology, Rockville, MD, 2000