Lee Murphy: Funding and training opportunities for technicians

As head of the Genetics Core in the Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility, Lee Murphy leads a team of expert technicians providing support to studies investigating the role of genetics in disease and health.

He is also a founding member of the UK Technology Specialists Network (TSN), a community of technology specialists in higher education and research institutes.

Initially formed in 2022, the network became part of the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy in 2023 to enable it to build on existing programmes to champion the roles of technicians and share best practice, knowledge, skills and career development opportunities with its members.

One of its initiatives is the Technology Specialists Network: Research Technical Professional Opportunities, Knowledge and Skills (TSN ROKS) – a UK Research and Innovation-funded initiative improving long-term career prospects for technicians.

In 2024, it was awarded £1.8m to build a professional network of technology specialist colleagues – known as Research Technical Professionals (RTPs) – across the UK and undertake professional development opportunities.

There are three main workstreams, each with a variety of projects to achieve the objectives of developing and promoting RTP careers, building skills and opportunities and increasing visibility and knowledge exchange.

It’s a three-year grant and we’re about halfway through. All these opportunities are still live. There is money for outreach work and tech-specific events focusing on what technicians do and how they add value to science, in order to showcase it as a career choice. Students at school think they have to be a professor to work in a university but they can have a good career as a technician.

We do a lot with upskilling, putting on workshops and residentials on how to write a grant and other demand-driven training. It’s also about increasing the visibility of technicians. As part of that, we have an International Conference Fund, funding people to go abroad for conferences so they can expand their networks, discuss best practice with colleagues and explore cutting-edge developments in their area of expertise. I’m really excited about that one mainly because I chair it. All we ask in return is that they share their learnings and pass it on to local technicians and the wider community.

There is also a Facility Day Fund where we give financial support to help technicians showcase their facilities. That’s been a fantastic one – the commercial aspects of that. We’re also doing work on equipment sharing and how we can share equipment better between Institutes. The great thing about having these grants, is it provides opportunities and gives technicians the training to apply for and get money, even if it’s only small pots. It looks good when you’re going for big grants and it allows you to lead on grants as a PI.

For Lee, these opportunities and networks are particularly important for technicians because in their roles they have hundreds of titles which often don’t include the word ‘technician’.

Officially I am in Professional Services. I never thought of myself as a technician until the Technician Commitment came along. It’s given me a clarity of purpose about what I can and can’t do. I always defined myself as not being an academic but I can be a very good technician. There are all these opportunities and networks. We’re happy to reach out to each other and by coalescing and coming together it makes it a good community.

Find out more about TSN ROKS here: TSN ROKS – UK ITSS