Researchers enter the Crucible

Designed by The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) the Crucible programme brought together 30 researchers from across the disciplines of science and social science for the first of four innovation camps with the aim of developing new ideas and explore the wider potential that interdisciplinary collaboration can bring to their work.

Helen Gresty, executive director of innovation programmes at NESTA, said, "The world is changing and there are many new challenges today that can no longer be solved by experts from a single discipline. Crucible aims to discover how interactions between different knowledge communities can generate new ideas through unusual and novel collaborations. This sort of research aims to increase our ability to provide radical solutions to today’s most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges."

At the end of the programme participants are offered the chance to bid for small grants of between £5,000 and £15,000 in an effort to encourage continued collaborations. Seven projects have been funded since the programme started four years ago.

Crucible 2009 includes university-based researchers in as varied subjects as biotechnology and sociology; people from organizations as varied as the Aerial Archaeology Research Group and Demos; and fellows from institutes and universities from London to Edinburgh, as well as the Open University.

One of the participants to attend the Labs this year is Katherine Haxton, a lecturer in Chemistry at Keele University. Her research interests include new drug delivery methods for metal-based anticancer drugs using polymers.