Dr Shona Smith - Research Development Manager
What is your current job title? Research and Innovation Development Manager for the Priestley International Centre for Climate (it’s a long job title!).
What is your academic background? I have a Masters of Chemistry and a PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry. After my PhD I was a postdoc for 7 years in Bristol, Leeds and Boulder (Colorado, USA). My research focused on studying reactions relevant to ozone chemistry which have impacts on air quality and climate.
Can you tell us a little bit about your job role? As a research and innovation development manager my role is to ‘develop and support strategies to ensure the highest quality proposals are developed’ in support of the Priestley Centre’s vision to ‘use Leeds’ expertise and interdisciplinary capability to deliver research to underpin robust and timely climate solutions’.
My average week involves a whole range of different tasks and picture below shows what I’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks and how that matches with skills I gained as a researcher. All of these tasks are about providing support from project inception through to proposal development and submission for climate related research at Leeds. That can involve a whole range of tasks from obvious things like helping to put together research proposals; to more speculative things like bringing together new researchers through workshops, seminars and networking events; and also providing information for communication and marketing to spread the word about how amazing Leeds is at climate research.
Research and Innovation Development Manager tasks (colour bars) matched to skills gained as a researchers (bullet points).
What are the best parts of your job? It’s extremely diverse and I decide how I spend my time.
As a researcher you are usually focussed on something very specific that is a piece of the puzzle in a much larger picture. I feel like my current role is more about the big picture and that’s been a really interesting change. I get to help to develop and support research proposal and academics working on a wide range of climate related topics and from a wide range of disciplines which is really interesting. I love the challenge of working with interdisciplinary groups and I find it extremely motivating working in an area that has huge societal and environmental impacts. On top of that much like when I was a postdoc I still decided what I do day-to-day and how I want to tackle the things I’m working on, and that’s one of the reasons I chose to stay working in a university environment.
What are the worst parts of your job? I get a ridiculous number of emails. I guess that’s the same for everyone these days though!
Aside from that one of the more challenging elements to adjust to is that there is ALWAYS an important deadline. Working on lots of proposals has meant I’ve had to readjust my attitude to deadlines and it requires strong organisational skills to juggle multiple deadlines and coordinate different teams of people. I try to do as much as possible in advance, although that’s not always possible!
What advice would you give to postdocs looking to get a similar role? Don’t undersell or undervalue the transferrable skills you have from your time as a researcher. They are incredibly diverse and you can apply them to any number of roles. Tenacity is key to being a researchers and that is valuable in every role.
When you’re looking at research support roles think about how you can apply the evidence of skills and experience you’ve gained from your time as a researcher to that specific role. Evidence of strong organisation, time management, communication, independent and team working appear in most job descriptions and these are skills and attributes every good researcher has. For example, when I was a researcher I was involved in field campaigns which brought together international and interdisciplinary groups of researchers and this was a great example when I applied for my current role of understanding the complexities of working internationally, across disciplines and part of a diverse team. As a researcher you also have the ability to understand complex information and communicate it in a variety of formats to people with different levels of expertise and that’s a skill I’ve played up in my applications for research support roles. Experience of working in a higher education environment with academics is also really valuable in research support roles so make sure you sell that too.