The Global State of Young Scientists – GloSYS – Africa team held its second in-person meeting at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, in early October. Attending the meeting were the core team, collaborating research partners, research assistants (tasked with collection of indicator and interview data) as well as one project advisor. The three-day meeting was packed with brainstorming sessions and presentations of relevant policy analyses, statistical data, and preliminary survey data analyses. Importantly, the meeting was also used as an opportunity to provide the regional research assistants with training sessions on the collection and analysis of interview data, kindly offered by project advisor Prof Lynn McAlpine. By the end of the meeting, the team met a number of important objectives, including making adjustments to the study population and the survey to reflect the themes emerging in the data collected to date, agreeing on dissemination strategies and assigning dissemination tasks to each team member, and implementing an online collaboration platform to streamline communication and teamwork within the group.
The entire team is grateful for the financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Wellcome Trust, as well as for the meeting facilities, which were provided by Mohammed V University.
The group is now working on making some adjustments to the online questionnaire, and will re-released the survey soon. The GloSYS group is also working on preparing the research assistants for the upcoming interview phase of the study.
