By 
Lecturer in Electronic Engineering, CEng, FHEA
Glasgow College UESTC, University of Glasgow
James Watt South Building
G12 8QQ
Glasgow, UK
I attended the Scottish Crucible in 2018, where we were hosted in Edinburgh, Glasgow University, and Abertay University. Since attending the Crucible I have been working on a couple of interdisciplinary research proposals, both involving collaborations between engineers in my field (radar and Radio Frequency sensing) and medical professionals. The use of radar in the context of assisted living is one of main research interests, for applications such as automatic activity monitoring, in-home gait assessment, vital signs (respiration, heartbeat) monitoring, and fall detection. Attending the Crucible was a very enriching experience, in particular in trying to understand the needs, priorities, methods, and styles of researchers in areas outside mine, some of them from perhaps social sciences or arts and humanities so very different from engineering. Although I don’t have (yet! – those proposals are currently under review) a specific research outcome to link to the Crucible, I feel it was a very well worth experience for its intangible benefit of creating connections with other researchers at my career level, getting to know institutions I did not know (the Scottish Parliament for example, but also Abertay University), and reflect on useful skills for career development such as how to deal with the media or how to pitch in a few minutes a broad and multidisciplinary project.
