Tress Academic

Five years ago, the University of Basel developed the antelope career program, which aims to assist highly qualified female junior researchers. To date, we have supported over 220 participants in their careers through funding, training, and coaching activities. Choosing competent trainers and coaches is particularly important for our program because they bring their expertise, their advice and their wealth of experience to prepare the scientists for their future careers. TRESS ACADEMIC was a very important partner for us from the beginning. Not only are they professional and communicative, but they are also always willing to find individual solutions. This has made our cooperation very effective, uncomplicated and extremely pleasant. Bärbel and Gunther Tress have become an integral part of the antelope family.

The TRESS ACADEMIC training courses, “How to apply for an academic job”, professionally guides our postdoctoral researchers on their way to professorships. We are proud that many of them have already moved beyond the application process and now hold professorship positions. With the other training courses, such as “How to publish in peer-reviewed journals”, “How to present at international conferences” or “How to become a more efficient researcher”, TRESS ACADEMIC has also provided the participants with important knowledge and has significantly optimised their output.

We can highly recommend TRESS ACADEMIC and look forward to further highly professional and cordial cooperation with them.”

I am Ana Antic, a PhD student at TUM Munich and my field of research is genetics factors influencing complex diseases. As with many other students, I am excited to publish my work, and in order to do so in a best possible way, I decided to take the course ‘How to publish in peer reviewed journals’ held by TRESS ACADEMIC. Gunther was very positive which helped make the course easy to follow. Thanks to his great work and dedication, I gained a lot of knowledge and practical strategies about scientific writing and the publishing process, but also, how to cope with problems and find ways to solve them. I feel more confident and more prepared to share my research with the scientific community. It is a very useful course, and I very much recommend taking it.”

The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), during the last seven years has used the service of TRESS ACADEMIC to increase the publication rate of our scientific papers. In total, 120 researchers and PhD students have participated in the courses. The aim for NIBIO has been to increase the capacity of younger researchers especially to reach a higher likelihood of getting their papers accepted for publication in highly rated international peer-review journals. The courses, led by Bärbel or Gunther at TRESS ACADEMIC have always received very good evaluations by the participants, entailing NIBIO to order a new course for 2018.”

Every course from TRESS ACADEMIC is an exciting event. The seminars are full of valuable information and exercises to develop and improve your academic skills, delivered with clarity and ease by the instructors. Attending their various courses has increased my skills in academic writing, presenting, and communicating, and has helped me to lift my work to the professional level. I am much more confident in presenting my academic work to colleagues, as well as to larger audiences now. These workshops feel like a fast-track to future career success in your chosen academic field.”

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is a research institute that operates in remote areas where support-lines are absent. We expect our early-career researchers to deal with unforeseen situations, cope with challenges and solve problems in a creative way. To a certain extent, we expect this attitude also from our trainers. We require not only a perfect curriculum that guarantees training success, but also a willingness and ability to deal with heterogeneous groups, strong individual characters, institutional constraints and the very special atmosphere every research institution has.

We experienced all of this with TRESS ACADEMIC on many occasions, and have never been disappointed. Every single course, from conducting a PhD, to writing papers or presenting at conferences has proven to be well-prepared, adapted to the target audience and its disciplinary background, and yet, readily adapted to new circumstances. In a way, both POLMAR and TRESS ACADEMIC have matured together. After ten years of co-operation, we consider the courses offered by TRESS ACADEMIC as one of the cornerstones of the training program offered by the POLMAR Graduate School. In fact, while we never imposed mandatory courses on our doctoral candidates, more than 750 participants (i.e. more than 80%) have voluntarily taken part in the courses offered by TRESS ACADEMIC. Based on this success, we are now in the process of extending the courses for our Postdocs.”

I was accepted in the Antelope program of the University of Basel in 2017. This program allowed me to complete two classes from the TRESS ACADEMIC company. The first one was a one-day course about “How to become a more efficient researcher?” After that course, I completely re-organised how I planned my daily/weekly schedule; it helped me to prioritise tasks and create smaller tasks to be done in one day. My second course was a three-day class about “How to present at scientific conferences”. It was a concrete course, where tips were given to improve the presentation message and we were able to practice what we learned immediately. Now, for every oral presentation, I am looking to the TRESS ACADEMIC criteria for what makes a great conference presentation. Those two classes were not only theoretical, but practical, with concrete tips to be applied in daily academic life.”