Developing soft skills in science: case-studies from microbial biotechnology

The goals of this course are:
i) to provide knowledge on the microbial ecology of different environments and the biotechnological potential of the inhabiting microorganisms.
ii) familiarization of the students with the so-called 'soft skills' by hands-on exercises based on the analysis of different case studies from the scientific literature on microbial biotechnology, and by the interaction with professionals in the biotech and scientific dissemination fields.
iii) to provide principles about writing a scientific project proposal by lectures and classroom exercises that will be focused on the topic of environmental microbial biotechnology.

At the end of the course the student will be able to perform the activities described below.
- Discuss critically the assigned scientific articles related to the ecology and biotechnological exploitation of microorganisms.
- Present the scientific results and/or concepts of research and review papers after a teamwork based on bibliographic research and slide preparation.
- Elaborate opinions on the received information about different topics of relevance in the context of project proposal writing, such as responsible research and innovation (RRI), open science and scientific dissemination.
- Prepare a written scientific project proposal focused on environmental microbial biotechnology applied to bioeconomy and circular economy.