On 12 April 2019, four of our Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), namely Girish Somwarpet, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Gerben Hartman and Tamar Khuchua, spoke at the IP campus event in the EUIPO. The IP Campus, which has been yearly organized by the EUIPO since 2015, aims at introducing the Office’s Pan-European Seal trainees to further career opportunities in the world of intellectual property.

The ESRs spoke to trainees about funding schemes for a doctoral degree, including pre-funded programmes financed by the European Commission as part of Horizon 2020. Basing themselves on their personal experience of entering the “EIPIN-IS” programme, the ESRs shared insights on how to draft an academic-oriented CV and a research proposal, how to prepare for an interview in order to receive a grant. They also advised the participants on the selection of potential research topics, which would be both relevant for the corresponding research institution and interesting to the researcher himself. The presentation sparked interest among the trainees and was followed by several questions from the audience.

This speech supplemented an EUIPO talk, given by ESRs earlier that month, where they explained their research topics to attendees from the EUIPO.