My winning proposal: Go back to school with the EPSRC

The EPSRC’s discipline-hopping scheme allows senior researchers to be students again

Top tips:

• Consider what secondment and being a student again will entail and only apply if you are comfortable with that.
• Do not consider the application as a standard research application; it should focus on research but must contain strong elements of skills acquisition.
• Clarity about the skills and knowledge you seek to gain will help your bid.
• Make use of the absence of a deadline to submit when the time is right. For example, when you have published relevant papers.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Discipline Hopping in Information and Communications Technologies scheme is a rare opportunity that allows ICT researchers to spend time in different research disciplines and gain new skills—or researchers from outside ICT to gain skills within it.