Impact with Research — Communicating impact to enhance your career

Learn how to create real-world impact from your research!

If you are like most researchers, you are motivated by the thought that your research will make a real difference — inside academia and out in the world. You want your research to have value, meaning, and purpose. But what does it look like in practice? And what career paths are available to you after completing your doctoral studies that will allow you to achieve an impact with your research?

This is a professional development training course for researchers that aim to enhance and strengthen their skills in exploring and communicating their own impact, as well as gain skills and resources for career progression, both inside and outside academia, and perhaps even mixing the two.

This course will guide you to:

1. Create an understanding of what research impact can broadly mean
2. Project your own impact with research possibilities
3. Communicate clearly to multiple and varied stakeholders one’s own research impact
4. Balance research with demanding and evolving social accountability
5. Understand available career opportunities and networks for making an impact

For all researchers passionate about real-world change

Skills in creating impact from your research are increasingly important at all stages of your research career, whether in winning research funding, employment outside of academia, setting up your own startup, other business or non-profit, or collaborating with the public sector or NGOs to get your research results into the hands of those who can benefit from them. Hence, the course will suit everyone doing research, from doctoral students to tenured professors. In short, the course is fitting for anyone active in research who is passionate about taking it out into the real world.

The course is open to all doctoral students, researchers, and faculty, no matter your university. It is recommended to have selected a research topic to work on and have a written research plan. Participants without Aalto study rights, please get in touch with the course teachers for further instructions on how to join the course.

Grading Scale

• Pass/Fail
• To pass, 100% of the assignments must be completed, and an attendance minimum of 75% of the course contact teaching sessions.
• Aalto’s doctoral students and researchers with a passing grade will receive 2 ECTS. Others can be provided with a certificate of completion.