Workshop: Successful Grant Writing in the Natural and Engineering Sciences - Module 2: What is your “Why” and your “What”

Details

Date: Tue, 17 March 2026, 13:00–16:30 h
Location: online via Zoom
Target group: Postdocs from the Natural and Engineering Sciences of the UA Ruhr universities (max. 25 participants)
Trainer: PD Dr. Daniel Mertens
Registration deadline: 3 March 2026
Contact for organizational Questions: event@rs.ruhr-uni.bochum.de

Description

Key Message
Arguably the most important part of communicating own research is identifying the key message. Projects are defined by a beginning and by an end. However, in research in spite of time-delimited funding, the end of research projects is often ill-defined. To this end it is important to well define the unique selling point of a project, the beginning of applying and to understand the fundamentals of project management. With this input in mind, the participants work on their central messages on a peer-to-peer basis.

Audience
In communication research convincingly researchers need to adapt to their audiences. Who is the audience? Whom to address with a research proposal? How to select and identify target audiences, e.g. the grant funding agency that is ideally suited for a project? How to deal with the feedback researchers get from the reviewers? What to do when the proposal is rejected? 

Storyline
What´s the secret of a good scientific story? The workshop offers tools to turn research into a story and to tell the fascinating story of research results and data. This will include pitching to peers to optimize the first impression. The unique selling point of the participants (USP) will be considered. The USP ideally combines the project, the expertise of the applicant, access to expertise and access to resources.

Download Workshop-Description (PDF)

Trainer

PD Dr. Daniel Mertens is Biochemist, Lecturer and group leader at the German Cancer ResearchCenter (DKFZ) and at the University of Ulm. He shares his knowledge and experiences since several years as professional trainer.

* In order to provide you with a comfortable registration process, we use registration forms of our service partner eveeno®. Please note the information on the allocation of places on the program overview page.