Training & Capacity Building Program

CZI Science Grantees and Partners

Science icon

Overview

For the second year, CZI Science is offering a training series designed specifically for our Science grantees. These training sessions aim to provide CZI Science grantees and their teams with opportunities to grow and sharpen professional skills, foster collaboration, and learn from experts.

Unless indicated otherwise, the training sessions are open to CZI Science grantees and their team and/or group members, and to partners and collaborators of CZI Science.

Do you have other questions or needs around professional development in science? Contact our team: mcb-science@chanzuckerberg.com.


2023 Central Science Training Series

This year we are organizing three Central Science series to cover the most requested topics from our grantees, including leadership, grant writing, and science communications. The series will take place in the spring and fall of 2023, check back in on this webpage for more details and registration opportunities as they become available.

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION SERIES

Thi Nguyen

Hosted by Dr. Thi Nguyen

This three part series will focus on how to increase your communication skills, covering the basics of giving a scientific talk, tailoring your message for different audiences, and building the confidence you need to speak in any context.

SciComms 101: Anatomy of a Scientific Talk - Completed

Sept 13, 2023,  9:00am - 11:00am PT 
Recording and Resources 

Science Communication is effective when the audience understands the context of your work, its impact, and how it is evidence-based. This session will teach you how to give a research talk by breaking down the sections of the talk and presenting evidence with the audience in mind. This session is interactive. By the end of the session, you will determine what evidence you present for each section of the talk and how to tell it like a story.

 

Tailoring Your Message for Specific Audiences

Sept 27, 2023,  9:00am - 11:00am PT
Register Here

Research talks are most engaging when you design it specifically for your audience, and scientific audiences differ. In this session, learn about how to define and tailor yourtalk based on different audiences (e.g., collaborators, funders, thought partners. OR - engineers, clinicians, politicians, or community organizers). This session is interactive. By the end of the session, you will have crafted a message for two types of audiences of your choice, and present it in a way that they want to be part of it.

 

How to Gain Confidence in Public Speaking

Oct 11, 2023,  9:00am - 11:00am PT
Register Here

What do audiences look for in a good public speaker? This session breaks down what it means to be a confident speaker in an inclusive and culturally-welcoming way. Individuals have their own styles of speaking, and participants will start to identify theirs and practice the intro as though they are giving a TED talk. 


 PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SCIENTISTS SEMINAR

CJ Fitzsimons

Date: October 17 - 19, 2023
Hosted by CJ Fitzsimons of Leadership Sculptor 

Apply Now - Accepting applications from August 2 - September 8 at 5 PM Pacific Time 

The CZI Project Management for Scientists Seminar will provide foundational skills for project management and a pragmatic set of tools that can be applied to any project in any institutional setting.

Overview
The virtual Project Management course will be hosted October 17 through October 19, 2023, from 8am-2pm Pacific Time in English on Zoom. Topics will cover goal setting, project planning, time management, facilitating challenging conversations, and much more. This practical and hands-on course also includes small group exercises, as well as the opportunity to develop your own project plan for your current work in a structured manner. The seminar is hosted by CJ Fitzsimons of Leadership Sculptor, with additional training support from his team. 

To keep the learning environment to an effective size for collaboration and support, we will be admitting participants through an application process. The application portal will be open from August 2 - September 8 at 5 PM Pacific Time. Apply as soon as possible; applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Admitted applicants will be notified no later than Sept 13, 2023.

 

Eligibility & Expectations

  • Full three-day course attendance and interaction is expected from all participants; including any homework around your project plans
  • The seminar is free of charge
  • Applications are open to early career PIs (within 6 years of your first independent position), as well as senior postdocs and staff scientists from CZI-funded labs
  • Eligibility is limited to those who can come with a project for planning and assessment (projects at the early stages will be most useful in this exercise)
  • The course is capped at 24 people

FACULTY APPLICATION BOOTCAMP - Completed

Chris Golde
Arne Bakker

August 7 - 11, 2023
Primary Instructors: Chris Golde (Stanford University), Arne Bakker (CZI)

This Summer, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is hosting the third edition of our virtual Faculty Application Bootcamp for PhD students and postdocs from CZI-supported labs pursuing a U.S. faculty position this academic year. Topics will cover CVs and cover letters, research, teaching and diversity statements, job and chalk talks, and interviewing and negotiating. This practical and experiential course also includes small group exercises, and stories from those who recently completed a successful search.


GRANT WRITING FOR SCIENCE SERIES - Completed

Dr. Morgan Giddings is sitting at a patio table

Hosted by Dr. Morgan Giddings, SciFoundry

In this two part series, participants will learn the connection between their science, their writing, their skills and their community and how to develop all of these aspects in a grant proposal that is engaging and a strong candidate for funding.

A Roadmap to Science Grant Proposal Success: The Critical Path Method  (Part 1) - Completed
June 14, 2023, 9:00am - 11:30am PT
Recording and Resources

In this 2.5 hour training, we will introduce the Critical Path Framework: four key components of a successful proposal. Then, through a combination of teaching and live exercises, we will cover the first two components in depth: knowing more precisely what reviewers really wants to see (and not see) in a proposal, and making sure the project idea is a strong fit for that.


A Roadmap to Science Grant Proposal Success: The Critical Path Method  (Part 2) - Completed

June 16, 2023, 9:00am - 11:30am PT
Recording and Resources

In this second 2.5 hour training, we will continue to explore the Critical Path Framework introduced in Part 1. We will explore in depth the writing of a compelling grant "story," and get clear on what, specifically, you and your team bring to the table. We will use a combination of teaching and exercises applied to your current work.

SCIENCE LEADERSHIP SERIES - Completed

Continue your science leadership development journey with this three seminar training series. Join us as we learn introductory skills that will help you understand your own leadership style and the essentials to  preparing and designing a successful science collaboration. 

CJ Fitzsimons
Petra Pandur

Leverage Your Leadership Strengths - Completed

April 26th, 2023, 9:30am-11:30am PT

Hosted by CJ Fitzsimons and Petra Pandur from Leadership Sculptor

Recording and Resources 

This session provides participants a framework for leadership in a science research context. Attendees will also learn to recognize their strengths and develop strategies to deal with any career development needs.

Lou Woodley

Preparing for Collaborations in Science - Completed

May 10th, 2023, 9:00am-11:00am PT
Hosted by Lou Woodley and Camille Santistevan, Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement

Recording and Resources

Participants will explore dimensions of team readiness for large, multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives and how a team readiness assessment can identify the stage of their scientific project and which areas they need to address as a priority.

CAMILLE SANTISTEVAN

Designing for Collaborations in Science - Completed

May 24th, 2023, 9:00am-11:00am PT
Hosted by Lou Woodley and Camille Santistevan, Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement

Recording and Resources

Participants will explore what they can do with the results of their team readiness assessment and determine next steps for the management of the collaborative projects.


2023 Single-Cell Biology

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TRAINING SERIES - Part II - Completed

A three part series that will help researchers establish collaborative research priorities, form Community Advisory Boards, and disseminate your research with a broad scope of audiences. These sessions are open to CZI Science grantees and their team and/or group members, and to partners and collaborators of CZI Science, i.e., the ‘CZI Science Community’. Closed Captions will be available. Please register for each session you would like to attend.


Shanell Williams HeadshotHosted with UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative 

Trainer: Shanell Williams, Director of Community Engagement and Partnership at the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi-CA). Ms. Williams has over 22 years of extensive community engagement and community capacity-building expertise. She has deep experience working with diverse communities in the areas of education, economic workforce development, affordable housing, criminal justice reform, and racial and gender equity. She has served thousands of Black and Brown families as a public advocate, nonprofit leader, and community organizer. Ms. Williams has over the past seven years launched all PTBi-CA community engagement efforts which include a 25-person community advisory board and community-based participatory research partnerships across San Francisco, Oakland, and Fresno.  While leading the Community Engagement portfolio of PTBi-CA she has been regularly consulted on how to build mechanisms for community partnership with hospital systems, researchers, and academic institutions.  

TRAINING SESSIONS

Research Priority Setting by Affected Communities (RPAC)
Date: Tuesday, April 11th, 2023, 9am-11 Pacific Time / 16:00-18:00 UTC 
Resources

This webinar teaches about a novel method for identifying and prioritizing
researchable questions in partnership with your affected community. This workshop walks through the RPAC protocol and highlighted the California Preterm Birth Initiative’s (PTBi-CA) partnership with community members and community-based organizations for co-development of our research questions.


Community Advisory Board Formation 101
Date: Tuesday, May 9th, 2023, 9am-11am Pacific Time / 16:00-18:00 UTC 
Resources

Join this webinar to learn the nuts and bolts of launching your own Community Advisory Board (CAB) for your research project. This workshop will walk through the PTBi-CA Community Advisory Board (CAB) Framework and highlight lessons, pitfalls and promising practices learned operationalizing a CAB structure.


Creative and Effective Dissemination: Showcasing the Voices for Birth Justice platform and campaign
Date: Tuesday, September 12th, 2023, 9am-11am Pacific Time / 16:00-18:00 UTC 
Recording and Resources

Join this webinar to learn creative ways for communicating and disseminating your research to a broad/lay audience. This workshop will walk through the PTBi-CA’s communication and dissemination strategies and methods for effectively communicating science to a lay audience. We will also showcase and use as a case study the Voices for Birth Justice campaign.

FUNDAMENTALS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT - 2022

Through our 2022 three-part virtual training series, hosted by Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, we offered grantees and their teams the opportunity to grow and sharpen their skills around community engagement and supported an environment where researchers and communities of color and historically marginalized communities can seamlessly work together. 

  • Fundamentals of Community Engagement Part 1 - Frameworks,
    Hosted on September 7, 2022
  • Fundamentals of Community Engagement Part 2 - Authentic Partnerships, Hosted on September 21, 2022
  • Fundamentals of Community Engagement Part 3 - Sustainability,
    Hosted on  October 5, 2022

2023 Neurodegeneration Challenge Network

NDCN TRAINING SERIES 2023 - HOW TO BE A STRATEGIC LAB LEADER 

Do you want to work more strategically? Leadership gives you the opportunity to share ideas and influence others. It also requires you to play many roles. To be an effective leader, it’s important to hone your skills in strategic decision making, navigating systems, building community, and effectively supporting your people.

This four-part series explores the principles of setting strategy as an early career investigator, and is designed to facilitate execution of your strategic plan. In this workshop, you will create a strategic plan that incorporates your research, service, and mentoring priorities while considering your well-being. Learn and apply culturally-inclusive concepts through practice and feedback with experts, mentors, and peers. These workshops will require some pre-work such as listening to podcast episodes and watching brief videos about scientists who have successfully set and stuck to a strategy. This series is for scientists who want to improve their strategic planning skills, set boundaries to inform decision making as a lab leader, and communicate and motivate a team.

Thi NguyenHosted by Thi Nguyen, PhD

Dr. Nguyen is a neuroscientist, career coach, freelance consultant, and former associate dean of graduate career development. She practices inclusive learning principles. She has led discussions with scientists at over 20 institutions on strategic planning and career advancement. She earned a PhD in Neuroscience from UT Southwestern.

TRAINING SESSIONS

#1 - Your Strategic Game Plan
Date: Tuesday, August 15th - 9:30am - 11:30am PT 
Recording and Resources 

With all your priorities as an early career investigator, how do you navigate as a Chess player rather than Whack-A-Mole? Strategic planning requires you to define a clear vision of what you want to build in the long term to help you decide what to say yes to. Then, you must communicate that effectively with your team and collaborators who could support you. 

In this webinar, you will:

  • Articulate your long-term and short-term goals for your research program
  • Describe your values that can be used in communicating your vision to team members and collaborators
  • Define success for your work

#2 - Time Management for the Lab Leader
Date: Tuesday, August 22nd - 9:30am - 11:30am PT 
Completed - Resources coming soon

Now that you’ve set your strategic plan and considered how to communicate and motivate others on your team, how do you put frameworks in place to stay on track? With so much required of early career faculty, it’s easy to get distracted. This session discusses principles in time management and psychology related to prioritizing your projects, defining success, and sticking to your values.

In this webinar, you will:

  • Define your goals and align your research and personal projects to those goals
  • Explain time management principles that help you be honest with yourself
  • Describe psychological barriers to saying no
  • Build your time map

#3 - Strategic Collaboration
Date: Tuesday, October 3rd - 9:30am - 11:30am PT 
Register Here

Working with team members is key to amplifying your shared missions and providing mutual support and momentum. This session focuses on identifying the roles that a team member plays, their needs, and the shared goals. We will also discuss communicating expectations for an effective and inclusive partnership.

In this webinar, you will:

  • Identify the gaps in your projects that you wish to fill through collaboration (including gaps in finances, talent, technology)
  • Define the role that others play either as collaborators, partners, or employees
  • Create a map of potential partners and collaborators and consider their motivations

#4 - Cooperative Leadership
Date: Tuesday, October 10th - 9:30am - 11:30am PT 
Register Here

Now that you’ve defined the roles and goals required to execute your vision as a leader, how do you work together cooperatively? Leaders can effectively lead when they can inspire and engage followers. What are the qualities that followers say they most desire in a leader? This session highlights the needs of followers, as identified by Gallup, and how knowing your audience informs your actions. We will also discuss how self-awareness of your strengths can help you be intentional and accountable in building relationships.

In this webinar, you will:

  • Define cooperative leadership for your situation
  • Explore qualities that followers desire in leaders
  • Discuss the role of belonging in team success
  • Identify inclusive team practices that work for your lab

2022 Central Science Training Series Resources

Catch up on our 2022 training series with the recordings and resources. Check out the details on each series below and our Wistia page for all video content. 

SCIENCE LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT SERIES

A three-part series to grow your leadership skills, hosted by Dr. Sam Krahl of EMBO Solutions. EMBO Solutions has been providing successful trainings for over 15 years, helping researchers of all levels improve their management abilities around communication, team dynamics, delegation, conflict resolution, and more. 

  • Principles of Leadership, Interpersonal Communication & Giving Feedback, Hosted on May 17, 2022
  • Building Effective Teams & Delegating for Productivity and Skills Development, Hosted on May 31, 2022
  • Understanding and Managing Conflict & Inclusive Values That Support Diversity in Teams, Hosted on  June 13, 2022


CHANGING THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE SERIES

Learn the impact of embedding important values and practices into your work and how this can lead to better science.  

  • Effective Mentorship in STEMM: What’s Cultural Diversity Got to Do With It, Hosted by Dr. Angela Byars-Winston on June 27, 2022
  • Fundamentals of Community Engagement, Hosted by Community-Campus Partnerships for Health on July 11, 2022. Trainers: Paige Castro-Reyes, B.A., B.S, Charisse Iglesias, PhD, and Alan Wells, PhD, MPH
  • Open Science Participation: From Research Scientists to the General Public, Hosted by Kate Hertweck, PhD, CZI on July 26, 2022

 

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION SERIES

Increase your communication and public engagement skills when communicating with all types of audiences, both scientific and not.   

  • The Basics Of Science Communication Skills: Telling Your Story to Effectively Engage Your Audience, Hosted by Dr. Jonathan Garlick on September 28, 2022
  • Share Your Research: How To Give a Good Talk, Hosted by Dr. Thi Nguyen, Science Communication Lab, on October 12, 2022
  • Principles and Strategies for Culturally Relevant Science Communication, Hosted by Dr. Mónica Feliú-Mójer, Ciencia Puerto Rico, on October 19, 2022
  • Sensemaking: Evidence-Based Strategies For Your Science Communication, Hosted by Liz Neeley, Liminal, on October 26, 2022

Additional Resources

MCB Central Trainings

  • To help support the CZI community working tirelessly to achieve their goals, become more resilient, and respond to unfolding crises, we've assembled a collection of expert trainings valuable to grantees and their partners across CZI portfolio areas. In these sessions, expert trainers will provide advice on how to best approach these challenges, teach new skills and practices, and answer questions that you and your community may have.

2021 Science Trainings

  • Check out our Wistia page for previous MCB Science trainings. 

Open Science Resources Website

  • This publicly available resource, supported by the CZI Open Science program, features information on applying open science approaches specifically catered to our biomedical research community. The site contains videos that are also available on the CZI Open Science Resources Channel.

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