On the move…literally!
I have great honor to start writing here at the UEF On the move blog. However, I believe I won’t be the only one as there are many UEFians On the move around the world. My blog posts deals about research collaboration trip to the US, Nebraska, to cities called Lincoln and Omaha. In these two cities two universities exist: University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). This trip would not have been possible without funding. I had a great honor to receive a Fulbright Research Collaboration Grant from the Finnish Fulbright Center (FBC) on May 2015. In addition, this trip would not have been possible without the help of my home institution UEF and very kind letters of invitation from UNO and UNL faculty members. Thank you!
My journey to UNL and UNO begins at October 23 and ends at Novemeber 14 2015. My main idea of blogging (this is the situation at the moment, but this idea might evolve) is to share information of research collaboration and provide tips/idea for collaboration. In addition, I will do my best to write about the US culture (and differences to Finnish one), and everything else interesting I’ll experience during my trip. To keep my promise of sharing information, here are some good tips for those planning research collaboration trip somewhere:
- if you don’t have funding, seek actively funding possibilities for travel grants. Foundation may fund you, but you might want to check out FBC possibilities too! I had two strikes from some large Finnish foundations before I got the information of FBC travel grant.
- in addition of facilitating your own individual cooperation, it might be good idea to share your institutions (e.g. uni’s, department’s or research group’s) expertise with people you meet during your travel. This idea can be done easily with web-page (see e.g., what we did 🙂 ). Just remember to forward this info to people you meet (use the link or QR-code, and email it to your hosts).
- scheduling stuff for your visit overseas may be a pain in the butt. Luckily there are web-sites that can help you. For example check out https://erkkofulbright.youcanbook.me/ . The site where this can be done – youcabookme (YCB) – is quite easy to use, the dashboard is clear and all you bookings are directed to you google calendar. For this trip, I did a new google account so that I can share this new account with my host (for solving e.g. overlaps), but in the future, I will link my YCB to my real google account.
- write a blog. And if you decide to do so, remember that in your institution, there are great people who help you out with this new, a bit scary task of becoming blogger. Thanks to UEF Media people!!!
Anyrate, hopefully these ideas make some sense, take care everybody!
Author: Erkko Sointu