Minor Introduction to Scientific Research

Everything you always wanted to know about research ... but were afraid to ask.

Becoming a researcher is a professional qualification. Science requires curiosity, original thinking, rigour, experimentation and critical analysis of results. But for centuries now, science progresses have led to ever stronger organizations at the international scale, scientists’ professional networks, shared practices and rules. In a both competitive and collaborative and frontier-less research environment, conducting visible and relevant scientific research requires a strong methodology and conforming to international standards.

The course will cover the following topics:

• Definition of scientific research, scientific methodology and the interactions between science and society. Ethics of scientific research.
• Acquiring a background on a scientific topic, analysing the state-of-the-art, compiling a bibliography, publishing scientific results, facing the evaluation of scientific work by peer scientists and presenting scientific activity to a specialized audience.
• Planning, conducting and analysing scientific experiments.
• Scientific environment, collaborations, research funding and interaction between academic institutions and industry.

Contents:

• Epistemology, "What is science?"
• A job of passion
• Bibliographical research
• Methods for conducting research
• PhD and its career opportunities
• Conducting experiments
• Scientific writing
• Scientific collaborations
• Digital Ethics