ESCMID Mentorships

To facilitate a well structured and organized professional environment, we encourage our members to be mentored by an ESCMID Mentorship Centre (EMC) for one to two years by a Mentor from our pool of EMC's (most often departments of infectious diseases and/or clinical microbiology). The mentee should take advantage of the Mentor's experience in order to benefit from it.

 

Objectives and organisation

General objective: Mentorships are intended to provide young or less experienced ESCMID members with the opportunity to obtain guidance and advice for research and career development from a senior ESCMID member supporting them for a one or two-year period. Objectives of the mentorship can be specifically designed to meet the mentee’s needs in agreement with the mentor.


Examples of possible outcomes of the mentorship are:


        - career planning (post-doc strategy, carrer oportunities, research directions, academia vs industry, planning and achieving

          successful goals)

        - scientific development (theoretical scientific knowledge, sustainable development in a comprehensive and balanced way,

          efficient and realistic research planning, development of new technic in one’s lab)

        - presentation skills and academic publishing (presentation of an abstract at a congress, manuscript or peer-reviewed

          articles publication)

        - data analysis (statistical analysis, methodology, experimental design, modelling)

        - application of grants / fellowship

        - networking and collaboration opportunities

 


Mentorships could be set up as face-to-face meetings, video conference tools, emails or telephone calls.

 

If you wish for a more practical experience, please visit our observership programme webpage.

 

Funding

Per year a maximum of EUR 1,000.00 will be reimbursed to a maximum of two years against original receipts. A maximum of EUR 2,000.00 will be reimbursed per mentorship.


ESCMID will reimbursed the following expenses within the EUR 1,000.00 budget per year to allow:


       - remote interactions between mentor and mentee: telephone bills, telephone conference invoice, internet bills.

       - one (1) face-to-face meeting per year: travel and accommodation during the visit to the ECC.

       - attendance of ESCMID events and congresses (registration fee, transportation and accommodation),

         as well as article publications fees (for CMI and CMI Communication).

 

If additional expenses are expected to result from the mentorship programme, they need to be specified in the mentorship application and will be reviewed accordingly. Please be aware: once the application is approved, only the previously mentioned expenses will be reimbursed against original receipts.

 

Eligibility criteria

  • The Mentorships are open to ESCMID members only (Full Membership, LMIC members and Young Scientist members) 
  • A member can only apply for one mentorship
  • There are no age restrictions
  • The mentorship exchange is handled via email, phone, video conference tools or face-to-face sessions at the EMC
  • Inside-of country and outside-of-country Mentorships will be allowed
  • Every application is subject to review and approval by ESCMID
  • Applications have to be submitted at least 3 months before the intended Mentorships start

 

Please note that mentor-mentee pairings will be indicated on the website with their corresponding time period.

 

Application procedure

ESCMID members submit their request for an ESCMID Mentorship through an online application form on the ESCMID website after having an agreement with the Mentor of the Mentorship Centre about the Mentorship.  An ESCMID member can only submit one Mentorship request at a time.

 

The mentoring partners must agree on the goals and outcomes and develop a mentoring plan complete with criteria for success. Mentees must provide documentation of the outcome after the mentorship period in the final report.

 

One mentor may have a maximum of three mentees at one time in order to be able to devote sufficient resources to each mentee.

 

Application procedure:

 

  1. Select and decide on an EMC
  2. Get in contact with the Mentor from the EMC, agree on a mentorship and develop a mentoring plan providing your CV and a short explanation (150-250 words) about your objectives for this mentorship
  3. Make sure that you have a written positive agreement about the mentorship
  4. Login as full or young scientist ESCMID member with your login details
  5. Click on the link ‘Apply now for Mentorship’ and submit your request for a Mentorship through the online application form including uploading the agreement with the Mentor and mentoring plan
  6. The ESCMID Executive Committee (EC) will evaluate the application and make a decision
  7. ESCMID Executive Office will inform the applicant about the evaluation results
  8. After half of the mentorship period, an interim report is requested and needs to be submitted online
  9. The Professional Affairs officer approves the interim report which allows the continuation of the mentorship for the second half of the period
  10. After the full mentorship period a final report is requested and needs to be submitted online
  11. After submission of the final report, the expense report with original receipts should be submitted to the ESCMID Executive Office for reimbursement

Application deadline

For Mentorships, applications can be submitted throughout the year.

Request for Mentorships have to be submitted at least 3 months before intended Mentorships start.

 

 

Report

After the first half of the mentorship, the mentee shall submit an interim report. After approval of the interim report by the Professional Affairs Officer, the mentee can finish the second half and shall submit a final report once he has terminated his mentorship after one or two years.

 

 

Publications resulting from mentorships

We strongly encourage mentees to publish outcome from their mentorship in peer-reviewed journals. Publications from research projects which have profited from mentorships are acknowledged with the following:

[Name of mentee] has received input for the study/project through ESCMID's mentorship programme by [name of mentor]. ESCMID strongly encourages mentees to send proof of all published scientific articles based on the outputs of mentee-funded projects to the ESCMID office – even if the project has officially been closed and the mentorship is closed. We will publish this information on ESCMID channels.