Global challenges require interdisciplinary solutions

Interdisciplinary collaborations are the key to solving global challenges according to John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Governement, speaking at last nights Crucible reception in London.

We are very proud of our Crucible programme and participants past and present which brings together early career researchers from academia and industry, and from a wide range of scientific and social science disiplines. It is the type of forum which doesn't exist nearly enough in my view and it's at the edge or intersection of those disciplines where the interesting stuff happens i.e the global solutions to big problems, or the exciting new research areas.

We are abitious about finding more opportunities to mainstream this kind of activity therefore we're really pleased to be able to announce that the UK Energy Research Centre  are looking to run their own Crucible.  The Centre acts as a bridge between the UK energy research community and the wider world, including business, policymakers and the international energy research community. This is an example of a demand-led rather than discipline-led research which I believe will increasingly be a model of future research success in the UK.

We hope this new Crucible partnership will be successful in seeding interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly between the science and technology communities and the social sciences. Only by combining these expertise will we be able to tackle the big issues in energy research such as demand reduction and environmental sustainability.