Stand Out Skills: Roadmapping for Strategic Navigation and Alignment

Stand Out Skills is a webinar series for early career researchers working in materials science disciplines. Hosted by experts, each episode explores presentation, communication, or career skills for researchers which aren’t normally taught as a part of established education pathways for materials scientists.

The Stand Out Skills webinars offer you the opportunity to learn a host of new abilities that complement your research career, including how to build your own research website, improve your academic CV and utilise new technologies to present your work more effectively.

The series will support your early career journey and help you to build a repertoire of valuable new skills to distinguish yourself and thrive in your research community.

Roadmapping is an important aspect of planning in materials science, with Royce launching several major exercises in the last few years on pressing National Materials Challenges. They are crucial in guiding conversation on a particular topic and help to prioritise research needs for policy makers and the research community. Getting acquainted with this topic early will be helpful in understanding why and how decisions are made at this high-level, and the influence it has on the direction of your research as a PhD candidate.

In this talk Rob Phaal, of the Institute for Manufacturing, will introduce roadmapping concepts and practice, and discuss its applicability to scientific research. Roadmapping emerged in US high tech sectors more than five decades ago and has since been widely adopted and adapted around the world, in different sectors, geographies and contexts. There will also be a Q&A where Rob will be available to address its relevance to your research interests, and a suggested short activity that can be undertaken after the webinar for a topic of your choice.

Rob Phaal joined the Centre for Technology Management in 1997, a research group based in the Institute for Manufacturing, a division of the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge. Research focuses on strategic technology & innovation management, emergence of technology-based industry, and the development of practical management tools and toolkits. Roadmapping is a particular interest, with research focused on the development of efficient workshop methods and underpinning principles. Rob has a mechanical engineering background, with a PhD in computational mechanics and industrial experience in technical consulting, contract research and software development.

www.cambridgeroadmapping.net