In July our Mentoring Officer, Dr Eleanor Winpenny, attended and presented at the SSM Early Career Researcher Summer Event which was focussed on Networking. Eleanor introduced the SSM mentoring scheme, before discussing the ways that our mentoring relationships can really helpful for networking.  We all need many different mentors to help us navigate our careers and our personal development. These may be formal mentors through societies such as SSM or academic institutions, or they may be informal, people with whom we have existing relationships who we tend to turn to for advice or support.  Taking up a mentor through SSM provides an opportunity for us to expand our career network beyond those we normally interact with.  Our mentor becomes one of our links into the wider SSM community, able to provide introductions to other SSM members at conferences and suggestions for others to connect with. 

As we approach the SSM conference we would encourage you to take this opportunity to link up with your mentor/mentee, and arrange to meet in person if you are both going to the conference! Mentors please consider how you can provide networking support to your mentees. This could be through direction introductions to other attendees at the conference, facilitation of new email/online connections, or simply suggestions of who might be interesting to talk to. Hopefully this will help pave the way to interesting conference discussions and fruitful research collaborations!