Many good things can arise out of a researcher group; belonging, shared knowledge, specialised training, and, if you’re lucky, colleagues that turn into friends. This is certainly the case for the School of Life and Environmental Sciences (SOLES) Early Career Researcher Network from the Faculty of Science, led by Dr Cristian Gabriel Orlando (“Gabby”) and Dr Manuel Lequerica Tamara.

Rather than being established by a formal committee, the group has evolved informally thanks to a few passionate researchers who passed on the baton to Drs Orlando and Tamara, who have continued to build on its foundation of social connection and peer support. They discuss how they made it through early challenges in the era of COVID to a space where Friday afternoon coffee is a regular fixture on the group calendar. The group’s leads share what they have learned since taking over three years ago.

What is the background of SOLES ECR Network, and how is it structured? 
 

Dr Tamara: Informal network is a good way of putting it. We get a little bit of support from two offices in SOLES. SOLES Research helps us put together some workshops, especially around grant writing. SOLES Inquiries, an administrative branch, helps when we need access to people's emails, organising catering, booking rooms – that sort of thing.

Dr Orlando: Dr Shawna Foo and Dr Catherine Price were trying to organise these kinds of events and bring everyone together. Then Catherine, who worked with me, asked if I wanted to take over. She explained the ropes, and she's still a mentor for us – she sends emails like, "this could be useful for your group." It's interesting, we are the early career researchers, but we still have people who are more advanced in the group as well and still want to be a part of the group. We're open to just putting people in touch and working together.

Dr Tamara: There's something interesting about this. Both Gabby and I did our PhDs at Sydney Uni, at SOLES, and we shared a desk. Someone said to me, "Manuel, you should run the SOLES Postgraduate Society, it's a great development opportunity." I said sure. We had no idea what was coming. It was right before COVID. Because Cristian was my desk buddy, I told him and he agreed. And then COVID hit, and the postgraduate society needed a lot of work because students were isolated. We did a wonderful job. I'm so proud of what we did; we kept the community going through Zoom seminars, taking over what had been a job for postdoctoral staff, and we kept it running. Then we finished our PhDs and forgot about everything. That's when Catherine Price asked Gabby if he wanted to run the early career academic group, and just as payback, he included me without asking.

Approximately how many EMCRs are supported by the group?   
 

Dr Tamara: We're informally set up and a lot of our communication happens via word of mouth or WhatsApp, but we have about 130 people in the network across the three themes. 

What are your group’s main goals or focus areas for 2026? 
 

Dr Orlando: Long-term, I love the idea of an informal network of postdocs that can eventually connect different themes so early career researchers can apply for multidisciplinary funding. Getting funding as an ECR is really hard – you always need a big name on a grant and rarely go in as the leader. There's seed funding and similar schemes, but it's hard. By the end of the year, the goal is to have built a group with people from different themes, and to run a session where we identify big problems and work out how to solve them.

How will you support ECRs over the next 12 months?

Dr Orlando: One event, most likely at the beginning of next month, is a media workshop. Rather than just offering information, we want to use it as a tool – everyone comes with their own research and a person from the university's media team will help each person build a little story around it for a post. The second event later in the month is about translating ideas into industry products. They'll cover the basics of approaching industry as a researcher – how proof of concept works, how testing is funded, and how to go from idea to product.

Dr Tamara: One of the biggest grant schemes for early career researchers – the Australian Research Council DECRA – is being run for the last time this year. The ARC is replacing it with a new scheme. A big part of our plan is to get people who know about the new scheme and give a detailed overview across a couple of sessions on how to prepare and apply, so people can use that opportunity for funding next year. The other one Gabby was insistent on is promotions – how to deal with the new academic excellence framework and address career progression. Most university workshops on this are focused on higher-level academics. Nobody focuses on level A to B, or B to C. We want to help people in a more tailored way. So the plan covers: new grants and funding, industry partners, media, the new researcher profile, Shut Up and Write sessions, and networking opportunities. And there are the informal catch-ups we keep doing every couple of weeks – usually Fridays at 3pm at the Courtyard Cafe. People show up, we chat, and that's how we learn about problems. It's also a space for venting. Everyone who applied for the DECRA this year was suffering, asking, "am I crazy or is this impossible?" That space lets you realise it's not just you.

Dr Orlando: There's also the football on Fridays – that's not only for ECRs, it's open to everyone, including the head of school sometimes. It's another space to get to know people. 

How do you decide which initiatives to run? 
 

Dr Orlando: We go with ideas we have and things we hear from people. The Shut Up and Write session works because one of the main complaints is being asked to do so many things that actual research gets pushed to the bottom of the list – admin, ethical approvals, reports. Analysing data and writing papers becomes the last priority because everything else feels urgent. During our last shut up and write session we had people working on manuscripts they hadn't touched for a year, and people preparing lectures because they'd never had the time. Blocking two and a half hours just for that worked really well. That's how we come up with ideas – by listening.

What have been some of the challenges in bringing members to your events, and what have you learned from them? 
 
Dr Orlando: The first year is always a bit of learning – figuring out what's interesting for the group, what they really need. New faces give a boost and people think it might be worthwhile, so they join. 

We tried Shut Up and Write sessions, workshops with the library about how to measure your success and build your profile, and various events we and others organised. What we saw was that at the beginning people were interested, but then they slowly stopped showing up. The difficult thing is that postdocs feel their time is extremely valuable. You're always chasing the next thing to secure a position in the future, so there's always something more urgent than skill development. It’s hard when people say they're coming and then don't show. 

Dr Tamara: Our school is the biggest school at the university, and we're split across four campuses. Within the Camperdown campus alone, we're across something like 18 different buildings, which means we have no idea who's who. So scale and spread is the first barrier. The second challenge is that after COVID, people work remotely. The third is that people at our career stage are starting families, with caring responsibilities and not a lot of time, so flexibility is essential. When we were running the PhD things, we could easily stay for a Friday evening football match or a beer. That's almost impossible now. That shift has shaped how we've approached things. We've also concluded that there's an overwhelm of academic offer already – too many workshops, too many career development programs. People just need to be productive. That's why Shut Up and Write makes sense: you do a bit of actual work without listening to something you may already know. And people just want to socialise. We've been playing with those insights. 

What has worked best for encouraging members to attend events? 
  

Dr Orlando: One of the things that worked – and this was Manuel's idea — was to just do a catch-up. Stop trying to put something elaborate together, and just see what happens. I also pushed for a WhatsApp group rather than organising everything by email. From that, we moved to an idea of mapping people and putting a face to names — you go to the same events and don't even know who someone is. We're working with ICT to use the MazeMap app to build something for ECRs so we know where people are, their names, their faces.
 

How do you keep members engaged between events? 
 

Dr Orlando: The WhatsApp group has been really useful. If you send an email, no one reads it in time. With WhatsApp you can say, "hey, where are you?" And people's profile pictures mean you know who you're meeting. One thing we promise is that we won't send anything irrelevant – just "we're doing this, do you want to come?" That keeps it clean.

Can you share an example of a creative idea or unexpected success? 
 

Dr Orlando: The Fridays at 3pm at Courtyard Cafe is a success. It doesn't involve much thinking and it gives us the opportunity to listen and know what's going on. If we could offer free coffee that would help even more.

Dr Tamara: And the bottom line is that it speaks to a need for human connection more than anything else. That's what's appealing – not productivity or career development. We're integrating that very heavily into the workshop plan. There needs to be that human dimension.

Have there been any standout outcomes or impacts?

Dr Orlando: There have been individual moments. When Professor Andrew Merchant came and talked about funding opportunities for early career researchers, people were really happy to learn what was actually available to them – because you receive lists of funding and don't know if any of it applies to you. The library session was another one: people were genuinely pleased to discover there's a free service where you can ask for your metrics and get a picture of where you stand compared to others. Yesterday, people were chatting after the session and getting excited about each other's work – "what you're doing could be really useful for what I'm doing right now." 

What advice would you share with other EMCR committees or network organising groups? 

Dr Orlando: Persistence. Don't get disappointed if no one shows up – just rethink. Think outside the box with your tools. Don't use Teams. Don't rely on emails. Try new technology or approaches. We're chasing an idea with ICT to map where people are across campus, because I don't even know which building is most central for an event.

Dr Tamara: We set up a Teams channel once and no one has ever used it. So yes, absolutely – avoid that. Going back to old-fashioned things like flyers on building foyers might actually be worth trying. And be empathetic with people. If they don't show up, don't take it personally. It's an ultra-competitive environment and people are juggling enormous amounts – family, mortgage, everything. And success isn't about getting 100 people. Getting five people who keep coming back and who connect with each other is more meaningful. It's about being persistent, being a face, and representing a group of people who want to be connected. One of the big tweaks we're making is putting together a year plan with structured, regular workshops. If you follow through, you'll get to know a lot of people, get a lot from the workshops, and build a genuine network.