Graduate community
First year research student conference
All first year research students contribute to and organise the first year conference, which will be online this year. Each student gives a presentation in parallel sessions, presents a poster, produces an abstract and a conference paper. This provides practice of presenting to a research audience for both academic conferences and helps prepare for their first year report.
The conference also aims to help research students develop transferable skills such as project management, public speaking and event planning, which will be useful in their career. The conference is organised and run by the first year research students.
Research capability development programme
The IfM delivers transferable skills training via the Research Capability Development Programme which is based on local need and the initiative of the postgraduate and postdoc community. Details can be found here.
Opportunities in the Engineering Department
The Engineering Department and University provide additional training opportunities. Further information is on the following websites:
Graduate student life in Cambridge
Cambridge University has a large and growing graduate community of 5,500 and a total student population of 15,000. Unlike most other British universities, Cambridge is organised into a collegiate system. This means that each student is part of a Department (in our case Engineering) for academic studies and affiliated to a College for social and welfare aspects.
There are currently 31 Colleges click here for the University website list of Colleges.
Each College has its own sports facilities, bars, social events (such as freshers' week) and accommodation. People generally make many of their friends in College, so choosing one is relatively important.
For more information refer to the Graduate Union Handbook.
