Once you’ve identified your risks you can then set about putting things in place to minimise or avoid negative risks, increase chances of an opportunity arising or its impact, and working out which risks should just be accepted.

The old adage, ‘you’ve got to be in it to win it’ applies to awards in science just as much as it does in any other context.

One of the most important things to remember about effective communication is you need to ensure people understand what it is you’re saying.

A scientist is one of the few professions where failure means progress. No one wants their project or experiments to fail, but a large part of science is failing and learning it.

Most scientists at one stage or another are involved in the preparation and submission of an article or paper to a scientific journal.

Communication of your science is core to your science having impact, and the well-established way to present scientific findings is in the form of an abstract.