Eastern Corridor Medical Engineering Centre Doctoral Training Centre.
The ECME Doctoral Training Centre gives PhD researchers an enhanced experience in a number of key ways intended to make them future leaders in the healthcare technology sector. We offer enhanced training, networking and contact with clinicians and industry from an early stage in their PhD journey. Our training is based on international best practice in both research and business skills. The project has a training and networking committee who ensure that the opportunities within the ECME project are fully realised by the PhD researchers and each researcher uses a personal development and networking plan to both record activities which have taken place and identify future needs.
The project adheres to the principals of the Marie Curie innovative training networks. As part of this, we provide support for individuals, partner organisations and the project as a whole. These principals are as follows:
At researcher level:
- Increased set of skills, both research-related and transferable ones, leading to improved employability and career prospects both in and outside academia (leading in the longer-term to more successful careers).
- Increase, in the longer-term, in higher impact R&I output, more knowledge and ideas converted into products and services.
- Greater contribution, in the longer term, to the knowledge-based economy and society.
At partner organisation level:
- Enhanced cooperation and better transfer of knowledge between sectors and disciplines
- Improvement in the quality of training programmes
- Creation of new networks and enhanced quality of existing ones
- Boosting R&I capacity among participating organisations
- Increased internationalisation of participating organisations
At project level:
- Increase in international, interdisciplinary and intersectional mobility of researchers in Europe
- More structured and innovative doctoral training, enhanced implementation of the European Charter and Code and the EU Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training
- Improvement in the working and employment conditions for doctoral candidates in Europe
- The increased societal and economic relevance of European higher education
- Strengthening Europe’s human capital base in R&I with a new generation of more entrepreneurial and highly-skilled early career researchers
- Increase in Europe’s attractiveness as a leading research destination, accompanied by a rise in the numbers of talented researchers retained and attracted from abroad
- Better quality research and innovation contributing to Europe’s competitiveness and growth
We ensure that all the above principals are adhered to and we actively provide opportunities for PhD researchers to meet in person and virtually with each other and with those working within industry and health care professionals working in a number of contexts.
Gender Equality
Ulster University, as lead partner, will ensure that all partners working in the project will ensure equality of opportunity during the management and implementation of the project and that the principles of the Athena Swan Charter are promoted across the partnership. UHI is an Athena Swan member working towards Bronze and recently all Irish Universities and third level institutions have announced that they are working to address gender imbalances in the higher education sector through the extension of the Athena SWAN Charter to Ireland
Equality of Opportunity
The project promotes equality taking account of all Section 75 groups and in addition, promotes good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group. All partner organisations have an equality policy and these policies are fully adhered to within the ECME project.