Our vision for the future is to have a scientific and educational ecosystem that provides equal opportunities for all young researchers.

2021/09/29

HYA webinar on researchers’ career: Work-life balance for researchers

HYA webinar on researchers’ career

Work-life balance in the life of researchers

Date and time: 6 October 2021, 16:00–18:00

Online event on Zoom, prior registration required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtfu-uqzotHNJdh_trxb18BVhVNNgtQ0NC

Invited lecturer: Dr. Gábor Kismihók, TIB Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Researcher Mental Health Observatory COST Action (Hannover)

Moderator: Dr. Katalin Solymosi, HYA Co-Chair

One of the priority goals of the Hungarian Young Academy (HYA) is to provide mentoring for young researchers on their research career path. It is with that in mind that we organised programmes in the past that brought together key decision-makers of the scientific arena (funders of calls for young researchers and the leaders of the MTA Doctoral Council) who presented their activities, and young researchers who could ask them questions during the subsequent debate session. In a similar spirit, we held information webinars with NRDIO in relation to the OTKA calls and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. This year we have also launched an individual mentorship programme related to the submission of Bolyai János Research Fellowship applications. In relation to mentoring, we consider it highly important to present the examplary career paths of researchers who have produced outstanding achievements. As part of that initiative, HYA members took part in an informal Zoom Café discussion with Prof. Valéria Csépe, Chair of the Hungarian Accreditation Committee (MAB).

For our October event, we have invited Dr. Gábor Kismihók, who received his PhD in 2012 at Corvinus University, and has been active in research abroad, and numerous programmes and initiatives can be linked to his name. In his talk, he will mostly speak about work-life balance, one of the main goals of the COST Action led by him and focusing on the mental health and well-being of researchers  (Researcher Mental Health Observatory, COST Action), and the contents of their manifesto to be published this year, but he will also give a general overview of  COST Actions and the opportunities they provide. HYA considers it vital to start a dialogue about stress affecting the life of academics and researchers, their difficulties, burnout, workaholism and expected overtime during weekends and at night. We need to find solutions together to ensure that all those working in research (from PhD students to professors) could work in a healthy work environment.

Prior and also parallel to the above project, Gábor Kismihók has taken part in numerous interesting and revolutionary initiatives related to RDI knowledge transfer, which have all been initiated from the perspective of research, are evidence-based, and in many cases, have by now grown into nonprofit businesses or freely available or marketable/exploitable knowledge for society or industry through various projects. We believe that these initiatives (https://oeduverse.eu/https://scilink.eu/https://labs.tib.eu/edoer/www.eduworks-network.eu/contact), and especially this type of research attitude open to “application” may serve as models, and they merit to be presented in detail to Hungarian young researchers.