Designing Scientific Research
Full course description
The overall goal of this block is to familiarize you with the design of a scientific research strategy and the writing of a research proposal and present their data to a scientific public. Central to the block is practicing the scientific thinking: knowledge/research question /hypothesis /objectives /experimental set up/results /interpretation /new knowledge
The general idea of the block is to design a study based on ongoing fundamental, applied, preclinical or clinical research and to learn how to stress the relevance of the study in a convincing manner. The training in block MBS1005 serves as preparation for the block BMS2104 and BMS2004: the practical training period (Master Internship) which will last the complete 2nd year of the master (BMS2104) and will be concluded with the master thesis (BMS2004).
A tutor will be running/coaching a student tutor group. You will work in small teams on developing your own scientific proposal and learn how to present and defend it in the most convincing way. You will provide and receive feedback from the whole group, followed by comments and feedback from the tutors. All the assignments and writing tasks are closely linked, to each other. Your creativity will further be stimulated during the “Design Sprint” workshops (part of ‘’MBS1006 Managing a Biomedical Innovation’).
On regular time points you will have a task to write part of your research proposal. This means that throughout the course you can revise and improve what you have written and gradually extend the text to the full proposal. The work is designed to dovetail neatly with the proposal requirements for the whole course. To boost your scientific skills and creativity, you will also receive workshops on scientific and business thinking and communication skills. You will participate in a network career event in which you will meet BMS alumni which hold various jobs.
Course objectives
- Formulate a novel project based on ongoing research.
- Interact at a scientific level with peers and coaches.
- Suggest research strategies to address specific scientific questions.
- Define feasible deliverables to provide structured research strategies.
- Critically review other research proposals.
- Present and defend a research proposal.
- Help you eliminate characteristic language errors from your scientific writing.
- Help you improve the style of your written scientific work.
- Give you practice in presenting your research proposal.
- Evaluate the business and valorization value of your proposal.