In this guest post Max Reiter, Community Engagement Executive in Edinburgh Innovations, gives and update on the ECR Team and the support they provide to researchers.
Did you know that Edinburgh Innovations (EI) has an ECR team? I wouldn’t blame you if not! For one, we’re a pretty new team formed after the conclusion of the Wellcome iTPA grant and dedicated to supporting ECR Researchers across all three colleges with commercialisation work.
There are a lot of unique challenges that ECRs (Early Career Researchers – I’ll try not to be presumptuous with my acronyms!) face, so within the team our ambition is to help plug those gaps and offer support in these areas.
So what do you do?
Given that we’re part of EI, you might not be surprised that our focus is offering support in translational, commercialisation, and external impact for early-career researchers across all Colleges. In our day to day we work across the Universities’ strategic remits of: Future Health and Care, Climate and Environment, and Data, Digital and AI.
In terms of specifics, our support offering includes: tailored project support, providing and hosting training, as well as launching regular funding calls for ECR-led projects. Furthermore, the team’s Entrepreneurs-in-Residence and Innovation Executive provide additional support to certain projects, with a focus on accelerating the adoption and real-world applications of innovation in all disciplines.
And how do you define ECR?
For the purposes of our funding pathways (unless otherwise stated on the funding call), workshops, and support, we define an Early Career Researcher (ECR) as any staff researcher who does not have a permanent/tenured position. For the purposes of our work, this is up to and including Chancellor’s Fellows.
And one last thing!
If you are at all interested in translational work, even if you’re at a very early stage and not sure if it’s for you, I would encourage you to take a look at our translational community page and we also have a funding call live right now, so please do have a nosey!
Further Information: Translational Community Page and Fuding Call
