Biography

Dr Simon Milligan has taught scientific writing at the Universities of Bern and Zurich and at the ETH in Zurich since 2007. He gained his PhD from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland in 2006 and augmented this with a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching English for Specific Purposes from Macquarie University in Australia in 2010. He has developed a number of writing courses tailored to the needs of particular fields, including medical research, neurosciences, psychology, computer science, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and applied mathematics.

Simon also has over 20 years’ experience as an academic language editor and writing coach in a range of social and natural sciences. He is the owner of Academic Language Services GmbH, a limited company that he founded in 2018, and is a member of the European Association of Science Editors.

Research and Interests

Main Focus

Simon’s interests include the use of large language models in writing, genre analysis, contrastive rhetoric, the use of authentic materials in teaching, learning and writing assessment.

Publications

Please find the publication with Paschal Maher: Teaching master thesis writing to engineers: Insights from corpus and genre analysis of introductions 2019 English for Specific Purposes 55: 40–55 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2019.05.001.

Lectures

  • Publishing Research in the Natural Sciences: Essential Writing Skills and AI Tools (UniBe)
  • Scientific Writing in the Natural Sciences with AI Tools  (UniBe)
  • Writing in Neuroscience Research: An Intensive Course (Neuroscience Center Zurich)

Public Relations