Alliances for Research Challenges: a unique opportunity for Scottish Research Collaboration

​Kalliopi Mavromati is a researcher with a background in psychology who is currently working with the Scottish Funding Council’s Brain Health Alliance for Research Challenges (ARC). In this short blog she introduces the ARCs and talks about her experiences as a guest at the launch of another ARC themed around quantum technologies.

Funded by the Scottish Funding Council, Alliances for Research Challenges (ARCs) aim to promote innovation through collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and sectors. Building on Scottish Research Strengths, the ARCs aim to create a research ecosystem of partnerships between Scottish Centres of Excellence that will leverage additional funding into their publicly funded systems. Innovative academic outputs and impactful practical solutions arising from ARC opportunities aim to directly inform policy according to Scottish Government Priorities.
​
The four ARCs focus on the topics of
• Brain Health; 
• Energy, Homes and Livelihoods; 
• Food, Health, Equity and Sustainability; and 
• Quantum.

Read more

Envisioning a creative and dynamic researcher community, the ARCs aim to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs)  development through lectures and workshops, alongside unique opportunities. ARCs encourage applicants to establish new collaborations that involves ECRs and considers Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Diverse expertise is encouraged to drive research creativity through interdisciplinary collaboration. 

The ARCs further aim to bridge the gap between academic output and tangible impact. This is achieved through collaboration with Scottish public institutions, including various local councils. Ultimately, projects supported by the ARC through seed funding and other opportunities are anticipated to translate academic observations into actionable output that can directly inform policy and impact current applications. ​

The incredible potential for synergy in research creativity and innovation between the four ARCs became immediately apparent to me as an attendee of the Quantum ARC launch event on February 19th 2024. As a psychologist by training and statistician by trade, I went into the event with no clue as to what quantum really is. In fact, when asked by one of the speakers for my definition, my best attempt was: “in computing, it refers to storing complex information in multiple simultaneous forms, which demands a lot of storage”. As you might expect, my quote was included in a list of… not so successful attempts to define quantum by a range of researchers, from physicists to neuroscientists, to capture the variety of expertise of the community engaging with and in quantum research.
​

Indeed, the Quantum ARC’s organisers and invited speakers eloquently demonstrated how someone with my background and familiarity with quantum could substantially contribute to the Quantum ARC’s commitment to stimulate new solutions that are inclusive, sustainable, and ethical by design. The ARC’s vision for a quantum society built on quantum science clearly illustrated to me the need for cross-discipline collaboration to support application-driven research. The importance of public outreach to not only promote but also inform research also struck me as tremendously relevant to brain health research.
​​
For me, a key takeaway from this experience was the importance of bridging communication gaps between disciplines to realise novel ideas that truly have the potential to transform practice. If there’s one message you take away from this blog post, let it be that no matter your background as a researcher, the ARCs invite your drive and expertise to transform brain health, energy, food, and quantum practice. ​