The training of the 10 doctoral students is the main focus of this doctoral network and the summer school is one of those yearly appointments dedicated to this aim.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, the two-day training included a large range of sessions to prepare the doctoral candidates for their future careers.
Main training sessions
The summer school in Cork took place on the 5th and 6th of June, right after the annual meeting.
As planned in the Grant Agreement, the summer school was dedicated to training sessions on topics identified by the consortium as necessary to be acquired at this stage of the PhD adventure.
The sessions were quite eterogeneous, the 2 days covering a large number of topics, offering students a multidisciplinary and multisectorial approach.
In this second summer school the main topics were:
- Career planning
- Introduction to Health Economics & Economic Evaluations
- Health Economics in Practice – Industry Perspective
- Health Economics in Practice – Public Perspective
- Financing Health Care
- Open Science
- Research Communication: Posters and Video Editing
- Role of patients in research
- Commercialization of science
We were delighted to have Sandra Redmond, CEO of our associated partner Salutem Insights, who took the DCs through health economics from the industry perspective.
We also had the pleasure of welcoming Avril Daly – director of Retina International, who shared her experience as patient and as director of an international organization, emphasing the role of patients in research.
Below pictures from the different training sessions organized during the summer school:
Discovering Cork and its surroundings
Cultural activities are also an important part of these days, strenghtening the friendships created more than 1 year ago and creating new good memories.
The weather was kind to us and allowed us visiting Cork as well as the surroundings.
DCs spent some lovely time at Blarney castle, a medieval castle main attraction of the city situated just some minutes away from Cork. Surrounded by green fields, farms, cows and sheeps, the road to reach Blarney castle took us into the typical Irish surroundings.
The weather was really lovely and the gardens around the castle just perfect to walk around, enjoying the sun.
A legend says that you have to kiss the Blarney’s stone if you want to receive the gift of eloquence. For sure is well needed when you are a PhD student, so our students stayed in line for quite a long time just to get close to that stone. Now it’s hard to make them stop speaking!!!:)))
We would like to thank all the speakers that participated in the summer school trainings as well as the hosting institution UCC and prof. Aileen Murphy and prof. Ann Kirby for wrapping up such a complete and high quality training for the DCs.
Thank you all for attending the event!
The RETORNA Consortium