ERA's Research Committee
Delivering innovation and impact
The ERA Research Committee was established in 2017 and is tasked by the ERA Management Group to devise and manage a collaborative ERA Research Strategy. Comprising two to three members from each of the ERA partners, the Research Committee focuses on defining cross-institutional, collaborative research that builds on and strengthens the energy research, training and enterprise profile of each of the ERA member institutions. It leads the strategy for the delivery of science, innovation and impact from the ERA facilities including research proposals, promotion of research collaborations across the partners and defining how ERA facilities will become true national research assets.
In addition to working closely with the ERA Skills Group in identifying future strategic opportunities and topic areas for challenge-based PhD studentships, the Research Committee also acts as a point of communication whereby ERA academics are able to communicate with each other and take a strategic view on the availability of external funding and of the current energy policy landscape.
ERA's Big Ideas
One of the current main focuses of the ERA Research Committee is to create a number of new, innovative and exciting energy research proposals, called the ERA Big Ideas. These define new areas of collaborative research and engagement opportunities across ERA and encourage the institutions to work together to maximise the national value of ERA. The Big Ideas propose the development of projects that reinforce the ERA institutions as leading energy research organisations, that maximises the training and development potentials of its people, defines the national impact of any proposed projects and articulates how these ideas align with national published strategies. The ideas are all linked to the ERA Capability Areas of Energy Transformation, Energy Storage, End Use Energy Demand and Energy Integration and identify which projects should be focused, when and why.
The key element of any ‘new idea’ is, of course, to maximise the value of the investment in the facilities across the institutions and to identify which industrial companies ERA should be engaged with. This ensures that the projects proposed are relevant, timely and that the project outputs actually make a difference to the wider energy community.
Maximising investment
Even though the ERA Research Committee has only been in existence for just over six months, it has already started to develop a number of new and exciting cross institutional ideas that really demonstrate the potential synergies of the ERA community coming together and working collaboratively.
Watch this space for more information on what those ideas are and, hopefully on news relating to the successful allocation of funding relating to their future development.
Members of the Research Committee