About

Ever  wondered what a biochemist and a mathematician might have in common, or how a  social scientist and a particle physicist could work together? Scottish Crucible is designed to help you find out just what great minds and creative thinkers can do when they come together!

Scottish Crucible is all about helping researchers to see the bigger picture. It aims to help researchers think differently and send participants back to their work inspired. The programme has been put together with the express goal of helping participants discover skills and attitudes likely to make your research more innovative. We want participants to return armed with a greater understanding of how science can benefit society and how thinking creatively can really make a difference to their work and their career.

Scottish Crucible aims to:

• Enable participants to widen your networks and create new and innovative collaborations with researchers in other disciplines.
• Encourage participants to develop an ongoing relationship with the Royal Society of Edinburgh – becoming part of the wider RSE network.
• Increase innovative capacity amongst highly promising research leaders of the future who are building their careers in Scotland.
• Enhance participants’ ability to think creatively and innovatively in their work
• Increase participants’ understanding of how research can impact on Society and how they could communicate their work to a wider audience.

Programme

Scottish Crucible takes place over three intensive two-day workshops (known as Labs) held in early Summer each year and hosted by one of three partner institutions consecutively. Each “Lab” aims to develop and challenge thinking within a theme:

Lab 1: Looking outwards – Policy, the media, the public. How to engage with those beyond academia.

Lab 2: Interdisciplinarity and creativity – Collaboration and new ideas

Lab 3: Enterprise and collaboration – Where and how to take your ideas to the next level.

The final lab also includes dedicated time and opportunity to work on collaborative proposals.

Each Scottish Crucible Lab consists of guest speakers, seminars, skills sessions, tours and informal discussions all aimed at helping Scottish researchers put their role into a wider context, such as how to best address the social and technical challenges facing Society. Not only will Crucible participants mix with their peers from a wide variety of science and social science backgrounds, but they’ll also have a unique opportunity to network with senior representatives of science, policy, government, media and business in Scotland.