Over 100 new SEPnet PhD students attended the GRADnet Induction Day on Wednesday, 26 October 2022 at One Park Crescent in central London.

Attendees were introduced to the three strands of SEPnet: Employability, Outreach and GRADnet by Professor Jacob Dunningham, Executive Director, SEPnet.

Tariq Himli, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Surrey, talked about his SEPnet Summer Placement at Occuity. "It was an 8-week placement setting up Monte-Carlo tolerance analysis tool." The work involved interfacing between his own code and software for analysis and bringing ideas into a multidisciplinary group. Tariq outlined why the placement was useful; he learned a lot about how software works; how to run them through code only; nice intro to industry work in general and it was a funded break from his PhD!

Laura Fryer, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Southampton also completed a summer placement this year at Openshaw & Co, Patent Attorneys. Laura researched state of the art technologies; analysed patent documents and assessed whether inventions were new and inventive; prepared detailed documents of new inventions and made logical arguments as well as drafted responses to letters from the UK patent office. Delegates heard how the hands-on experience was interesting and how Laura gained an understanding of what types of jobs and roles she might enjoy. The placement was an opportunity to experience working in industry without leaving academia; it broadened her skillset and showed adaptability.

Four parallel workshops were on offer:

• DISCnet Taster Session: Introduction to Machine Learning using ATLAS Open Data delivered by Dr Kate Shaw, Lecturer, Dr Thomas Stevenson, Research Fellow and Zo Earnshaw, Postgraduate Researcher, Physics and Astronomy, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sussex;

• Introduction to basic Python & Introduction to Scientific Python delivered by Dr Tim Kinnear, Lecturer in Computational Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kent;

• How to get your research published delivered by Tom Sharp and Rob Freeman, Institute of Physics;

• Science Communication Skills delivered by Dr Claudia Antolini, SEPnet - The Ogden Trust Senior Officer for Outreach and Public Engagement, Royal Holloway University of London and Nuala O'Flynn, SEPnet/Ogden Physics Outreach and Public Engagement Officer at University of Hertfordshire.

Thank you to all our contributors for making this event a success this year.

After two years of online delivery due to the pandemic it was great to be back in person at One Park Crescent and having the opportunity to meet this year's cohort of SEPnet PhD students face to face.�Everyone enjoyed meeting their fellow PGRs and found the workshops really useful.

Hope to see some of you at a future GRADnet event. See here for our training programme for 2022-23.

Science Communication Skills; Python; IOP How to get your research published and DISCnet workshops: