Building Your Professional Brand: Networking, Visibility, and Career Growth
Aug 6, 2025
This webinar will equip early career professionals with the tools to build a strong, adaptable professional brand that supports career success across academia, industry, and national laboratories. Participants will learn how to effectively communicate their expertise, expand their network, and raise their visibility in diverse professional settings.
Our speaker and panelists will explore:
- How to craft a professional brand that translates across academic, industrial, and national labs.
- Networking strategies tailored to each sector to build career-advancing connections.
- Approaches to increasing visibility and aligning your brand with long-term professional goals.
Sponsored by American Elements
Positioning Your Research for Long-Term Success: Insights for Early Career Scientists
Aug 13, 2025
Navigating the evolving landscape of scientific research requires more than technical expertise—it demands strategic foresight, adaptability, and a vision that extends beyond individual projects. This webinar, tailored for early career faculty and scientists, explores how researchers can craft research programs that are resilient to shifts in funding priorities, emerging technologies, and evolving field directions.
Through actionable insights and a panel discussion, participants will learn how to align their research goals with broader scientific challenges, build flexibility into their programs, and position themselves for long-term success in a competitive research environment. Whether you are starting your first independent project or looking to bolster your existing research program, this webinar will equip you with the tools to think bigger and adapt effectively.
Key Topics:
- Transitioning from short-term project thinking to designing cohesive, long-term research programs.
- Identifying grand challenges in your field and aligning your research with impactful, interdisciplinary goals.
- Building flexibility into your program to pivot when funding priorities or field directions shift.
Sponsored by American Elements
Avoiding Loss of Intellectual Property
Aug 19, 2025
Safeguarding intellectual property (IP) starts well before a patent application is filed—and taking the right steps early can be the difference between building a robust IP portfolio and losing rights to your innovations. In this webinar, IP attorneys Jas Lee and Brandon Blackwell from Wolf Greenfield will cover how early-stage companies can avoid losing IP rights through premature or unintentional disclosures or commercial activity.
Attendees will gain insights into:
- What constitutes a disclosure under U.S. and foreign law—and how to avoid sacrificing patent rights via premature self-disclosures
- Best practices for assigning IP and protecting it during collaborations, fundraising, and go-to-market efforts
- Strategies for using written agreements, robust invention documentation, and internal IP management systems to avoid loss of trade secrets and other confidential information
This is the second session in a three-part webinar series with Wolf Greenfield focused on helping startups tackle IP challenges with confidence.
Sponsored by:
Innovation in Thermoelectric Materials: From Fundamental Physics to Practical Applications
Aug 20, 2025
Details for this event will be announced shortly. This webinar is presented in conjunction with the August 2025 issue of MRS Bulletin.
Sponsored by American Elements
Navigating Innovation: Strategies for Early Career Researchers
Aug 21, 2025
This webinar shares the real-world journey of filing a first patent—including international applications—providing practical insights for early-career researchers and faculty. It outlines key steps, challenges, and opportunities in the patenting process, illustrating how early protection of innovations can unlock funding, collaborations, and career growth. Participants will gain a clear understanding of how patents can elevate research value and drive academic and entrepreneurial impact. Designed for early-career researchers, the session aims to demystify intellectual property and encourage researchers to take confident steps from idea to innovation.
Sponsored by American Elements
A New Era of Ferroelectric Thin Films for Nonvolatile Memories
Sep 10, 2025
Details for this event will be announced shortly. This webinar is presented in conjunction with the September 2025 issue of MRS Bulletin.
Sponsored by CAMECA
More Money, More Power: Knowing & Negotiating Your Worth
Sep 18, 2025
Money! It plays such an integral role in our lives today, but is often a source of stress and anxiety. Part of the challenge is we are taught not to discuss money or that money should be a secondary priority. What if we had a way to feel empowered when thinking about money, especially as it relates to our careers? If we consider money as a tool that we can control, rather than something that controls us, it can become a powerful mechanism to provide us with the financial freedom to build the career and life we want.
It all starts with knowing your worth and knowing you can champion yourself. In this webinar, Professional Speaker and STEM Career Coach Alaina G. Levine will engage in a frank conversation about money and power. We will address how to look at money as a tool, how to establish your worth, and how to approach money as it relates to career advancement, job searches, and salary negotiation. We will provide a framework for you to get started today to achieve your professional and financial goals, and most importantly, to use money as a way to create Your Unicorn Career: the customized, authentic career that brings you joy, meaning, AND MONEY.
Sponsored by American Elements
The Curse of Knowing: Why Scientists Struggle to Be Understood (and How to Fix It)
Sep 25, 2025
Green Cards for Scientific Researchers—How to Win Your EB-1/NIW Case!
Oct 21, 2025
Interested in obtaining a permanent Green Card to work in the United States? Generally, a foreign national seeking permanent residence through employment must be sponsored by his or her employer via the PERM Labor Certification process.
There are numerous routes to employment-based permanent residence that do not require PERM Labor Certification, thereby allowing foreign nationals to avoid this complicated process while also reducing the wait time to obtain employment-based permanent residence.
This presentation will cover and compare the criteria for the EB-1A classification for foreign nationals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, the EB-1B classification for foreign nationals who are outstanding researchers or professors, and the National Interest Waiver (“NIW”) classification. The presentation will also discuss the different types of nonimmigrant visa work classifications.
Save the Audience, Save Yourself: The Science of Better Conference Presentations
Oct 23, 2025