By 
Chancellor’s Fellow
Centre for Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh
https://www.cvs.ed.ac.uk/profiles/andrea-caporali
acaporal@exseed.ed.ac.uk
The Scottish Crucible 2014 has been for me an intellectual and networking hub for keeping up-to-date with science and promoting innovative ideas. A unique scientific environment which allow me to evolve as a PI and to accelerate research progression of my lab. I feel that being part of Scottish Crucible further strengthened my career path, my research ambition and the confidence in my research. Moreover, I had benefit from an encouraging environment that favours different thinking and support collaboration between different research fields.
I have attended the Scottish Crucible at the beginning of the Chancellor’s Fellowship at University of Edinburgh and it has been a crucial experience to establish my lab in Edinburgh from Bristol. Through the Scottish Crucible, I became aware of the Scottish Universities environment and network and I have learned of the possible funding opportunity of the Scottish Government.
Since then, I have since obtained successful grants with the British Heart Foundation and MRC, as well as published papers in the field of vascular regeneration medicine. Moreover, together with Ewan Campbell, I was awarded a grant from the Scottish Crucible 2014 to develop a RNA delivery system using nanotechnology. We are still working together towards the publication of data showing an unexplored application of nanotubes.
