On Wednesday, 23rd October, our MultiSim2 project hosted a Clear Ideas workshop: Beyond Academia. The workshop was attended by the MultiSim2 team and Insigneo Associate Members from the IMSB (Integrated Musculo-Skeletal Biomechanics) group explored how to take their research Beyond Academia to the clinic, industry and the public. This workshop was funded through EPSRC’s Creativity@Home initiative, to bring creative thinking workshops and skills to the Engineering and Physical Science research community.
Dr Kamal Birdi facilitated this creative thinking CLEAR IDEAS workshop to address these topics and, in the process, demonstrate the creative thinking skills and techniques behind this framework. Three groups, each focusing one of the three Beyond Academia aspects, worked through the steps of Illuminate, Diagnose, Erupt, Assess and Select, to better understand the challenges of taking research beyond academia and develop creative solutions to address them. During the process they were exposed to creative thinking techniques, such as using the analogy of your favourite restaurant, movie or holiday to create solutions or how a world of smart, little people would solve their problems for them, and translating these ideas back to the real world.
At the end of the workshop the teams shared their ideas for demonstrating the benefits of computer modelling to clinicians, improving the quality of software through bug fixing competitions, and using student projects to develop the public facing websites.
