Early Career Professionals
ELRIG Early Career Professional Impact Award 2024
An Early Career Professional (ECP) can be a student in higher education undertaking an undergraduate or postgraduate degree (including PhD), or within 5 years of finishing higher education and starting their career in life sciences and drug discovery. These ECPs are critical contributors to ELRIG, bringing new science, fresh ideas and energy to every event.
This award will recognise impact achieved through one of the following ways:
- Through the delivery of impactful science, contributing to early, pre-clinical drug discovery
- By their science or technology development work
- Through their leadership or facilitation of collaborations within the drug-discovery space
- Through other philanthropic and volunteering contributions
ECPs may apply directly or be nominated by a colleague, as ELRIG invites the wider community to propose ECP colleagues that have made noteworthy impact. In each case, application requires submission of the following:
1-page, 300-word synopsis of the ECPs contribution and its impact on early drug discovery, using the following form and send a brief 2-page resume to sanj.kumar@elrig.org.
Forms need to be submitted by the closing deadline – Friday 8th March 2024. The winner will be notified before the event.
Did you know that over 2000 biomedical science delegates attended ELRIG conferences in the last 12 months, all at no charge?
Of these, nearly a third are are ‘early career professionals’, or ECPs – either students in undergraduate, PhD or first post-doctoral positions or scientists that are just setting out on their industrial career path. These ECPs are critical contributors to ELRIG, bringing new science, fresh ideas and energy to every event.
Building such networks is an imperative for ECPs as they navigate the myriad collaboration and career options ahead of them. As part of the ELRIG events programme, there will be a range of activities designed specifically for early career professionals.
Am I an Early Career Professional (ECP)?
ELRIG definition of an Early Career Professional.
An Early Career Professional (ECP) can be a student in higher education undertaking an undergraduate or postgraduate degree (including PhD), or within 5 years of finishing higher education and starting their career in life sciences and drug discovery. An ECP could be one of the following
-Undergraduate student
-Postgraduate student (including PhD)
-Starting their career in life sciences and drug discovery
Career breaks will be recognised, as will individuals whose career has spanned a break due to caring responsibilities or personal circumstances e.g. a period of parental/adoption leave, family commitments, illness, or other exceptional circumstances.
Why Choose ELRIG?
ELRIG is a UK-based not-for-profit organization that brings together academic and biopharma industry experts and thought leaders to exchange ideas and information through the provision of free-to-attend scientific meetings and conferences. Our primary objective is to provide outstanding, leading edge knowledge to the life sciences community on an open access basis.
If you’re actively involved in biomedical research and innovation, and are an ECP, why choose ELRIG?
- Despite the saying, lunch (and registration) really is free at all ELRIG events.
- ELRIG builds enviable high quality scientific agendas that showcase the latest developments in drug discovery and research platform technologies.
- ELRIG events provide a vibrant, informal setting to network with others across all sectors of the community, including academics, biotech and pharma scientists, technology vendors and support professionals.
If you have ideas about things you would like to see and/or can help with outreach please get in touch with group leader, Mark Soave via the ELRIG team.
What participants of previous ELRIG ECP activities have said…
We were delighted to host an ELRIG careers panel and networking event at the Crick. Del and his colleagues delivered a fantastic session that was hugely useful for our attendees, in particular our junior scientist and researchers, who got a real insight in to the medical and bio-technology sectors and an opportunity to ask questions and network with professionals they don’t have access to in their daily work. We look forward to working with ELRIG again in the future.
I was impressed by how interactive the event was – as a speaker it is really motivating to get so many good questions from the audience that showed their engagement and enthusiasm. I’d definitely recommend this event to both future speakers and attendees!
I was at the ELRIG Drug Discovery 2018 and have attended one of the career workshops for the early career professionals chaired by Emma Howarth. I have been attending ELRIG Drug Discovery meetings for a number of years. I thought the introduction of workshops and Learning Paths aimed at people in their early career stage is a brilliant idea. These sessions definitely benefitted people in the early stages of their scientific career as well as people, like myself, who are returning to the profession from a career break. It goes to show that ELRIG values everyone as an asset in the drug discovery industry. Thank you so much for putting together such a great programme for the event!
I attended the last ELRIG Drug Discovery meeting that was held digital in Oct-2020. I know that organizing such a big event under the current circumstances (not only social but, especially, economical) was a challenging task. This is why I was so impressed by the excellence and quality of the meeting.The scientific level of the presentations and the relevance of the sessions’ topics, aligned with current trends in drug discovery, simply lived up to the expectations and the reputation of the conference: no one that had attended previous events should be surprised. But the technical quality of the whole conference was certainly outstanding. I am not sure which of these features impressed me most: the high quality of image and sound during the presentations, with the flexibility that the “chat” and “Q&A” buttons provided to ask and discuss; the clarity of the virtual venue and ease to move around and access all the areas; the way the poster area and the exhibitor hall were arranged (it was so easy and convenient to look at the posters or to visit a virtual booth and get the information needed or just arrange a meeting with the vendor); the possibility of networking with friends and colleagues in the lounge… everything was carefully designed and performed to perfection, with no failures nor technical issues.
I was very glad I could enjoy this meeting and want to congratulate and express my sincere gratitude to the organizers for their excellent work in these times of extreme difficulties. Thank you guys for such a fabulous event!