By 
Lecturer in Statistical Modelling
School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriot-Watt University
https://www.hw.ac.uk/staff/uk/egis/dr-sandhya-patidar.htm
+44 (0) 131 451 4456 S.Patidar@hw.ac.uk
I participated in the Scottish Crucible programme in 2013 and it was a highly stimulating experience for me. It provided me with a unique opportunity to meet and engage with a highly talented group of ambitious researchers coming from a range of disciplines and based at various universities, institutes and organisations in Scotland. I was able to network with these like-minded researchers who were enthusiastic to cross their disciplinary boundaries and think creatively about developing innovative research ideas/solutions aimed at impacting our Society. I am an applied mathematician and I mostly work in engineering applications of mathematics but, at the Scottish Crucible programme, I discussed the opportunity to engage with researchers from many non-engineering disciplines, such as social sciences and arts. This type of engagement activity has certainly pushed my research boundaries beyond the engineering realm and helped me to see wider possible applications of my skills. Since then I have managed to successfully collaborate with social scientists and delivered several high impact research outcomes.
I found that the overall structure of the Scottish Crucible programme is very carefully and strategically designed to break the barriers that, quite often, successful researchers can struggle to cross when attempting to engage outside of their disciplinary boundaries. It facilitates a very friendly and supportive environment for participants to boost their confidence, think creatively and explore the wider potential of their research within an interdisciplinary team set up. I found the whole setting and programme structure well balanced and that it has certainly enhanced my personal skills in leading my discipline much more effectively and independently within an interdisciplinary team.
After successfully completing the programme, I collaborated in many high profile interdisciplinary research projects where, in different roles (PI/CI/post-doc researcher), I successfully led the development of innovative mathematical and statistical ideas/conceptual frameworks for application in science, engineering and social science research projects. Since 2013, I saw a career acceleration and my research work (conducted as part of interdisciplinary team) has been published in more than 20 high impact journal papers. These have been published in 13 different interdisciplinary journals with total citation numbers currently reaching 169 (Scopus), 261(Researchgate) and 298(Google Scholar) in the last five years. During that time, I have also written 3 invited book chapters, 3 technical reports directed to an industrial audience and 25 international conference papers. These were presented at top conferences in my area (e.g. IAHR, IBPSA and WREC) with two winning best paper awards and one, best presentation award.
