Reading climate researcher joins the crucial Crucible

University of Reading press release

Release Date: 06 July 2007

Dr Paul Williams, a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Fellow at the University of Reading, has been chosen from amongst hundreds of applicants to participate in the prestigious Crucible Programme, designed to encourage the brightest young researchers to take risks and embark on ground-breaking collaborations.

Paul is one of thirty researchers who will come together for three innovation laboratory weekends and explore the wider potential of their work. The programme, run by The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), is now in its fourth year and has proved to be a massive success.

Crucible 2007 sees social scientists join their science and technology peers on the programme for the first time. The two groups are very rarely given the opportunity to work together and it is hoped that groundbreaking collaborations will grow out of their meetings.

Dr Williams, who is based in the University's Department of Meteorology, commented:

"I am thrilled to be taking part in Crucible. Climate change is the major problem of our time and it will not be solved by climate researchers writing scientific papers that are read only by other climate researchers. I firmly believe that climate scientists must engage directly with researchers from other disciplines if the climate problem is to be solved. I am delighted that the Crucible programme is helping me do just that."

Participants this year include university-based researchers in as varied subjects as astrophysics and bacterial genomics; industry people from large corporations such as Hewlett-Packard and Proctor & Gamble; and fellows from institutes such as the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Macaulay Institute, which carries out land use research.