Tackling Infections: Skills & Mobility Accelerator
Lead Research Organisation:
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Department Name: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Abstract
The Tackling Infections: Skills & Mobility Accelerator (TISMA) will bring together expertise of two specialist institutions, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to enable a cross-sector and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange (KE) programme.
Aim:
TISMA will support the development of early career researchers (ECRs), technical, and professional staff across the two partners institutions as well as a diverse range of collaborators by:
Objectives:
Deliver a targeted training programme aimed at building human capital. This will provide TISMA participants with the opportunity to identify what placements would be beneficial for their career development and increase the capabilities of the pipeline of support in tackling infectious animal diseases and welfare.
Deliver a series of open competitive funding calls for placements. Separate workstreams will focus on ECRs, technical staff, professional staff and broader academic participants ensuring a diversity of participants and allowing a flexibility often missing from similar training and placement accelerators. These workstreams will cut across policy, industry and the third sector allowing all participants to actively target the mobility placements that best match their needs.
Create resources to enable sector learning on enhanced knowledge exchange, skills development and sharing innovation between sections through mobility activities.
Activities will predominantly focus on the priority theme of "tackling infections" with research areas related to infectious animal diseases and welfare, plant health, zoonosis and AMR being in scope. Activities may also cut across other themes including data-intensive bioscience, engineering biology and health across the life course.
While TISMA will embrace the competitive nature of an open funding call, and all the benefits this can bring, several collaborators and potential hosts have already been identified with agreements in place to explore placements during the second stage of the project. These potential hosts represent a huge diversity across the tackling infections strategic theme, including industry placements; such as with Zoetis, the world's largest producer of medicine and vaccinations for pets and livestock, policy placements; including the House of Lords Library, research placements including the British Parasitology Society the Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute and third-sector organisations; such as LifeArc Opportunities Assessment Group, Knowsley Safari and the charity Sightsavers and international academic institutions such as Nagasaki University in Japan.
Benefits:
Short term benefits will be realised though creating new connections and strengthening existing relationships with industry, policymakers and wider community stakeholders. TISMA will also benefit the wider research culture within the partnering institutions, supporting career development activities in line with our commitments to the Researcher Development Concordat and Technician Commitment. It will build on and complement existing activities designed to support staff in exploring careers in a range of sectors, particularly in the LSTM 'Ignite' mentoring and 'Prosper' career development programmes. The six-month 'Prosper' programme, ending in April 2024, is supporting a cohort of 16 staff to understand and explore career opportunities across different sectors.
To ensure sustainable impact and share learnings beyond the TISMA partners and collaborators we will also produce and disseminate, case studies from individual mobility placements that will benefit future similar career development activities across the sector. In the medium to long term this will also have impact by delivering against our individual institutional KE strategies, building capacity, engagement and partnership principles of the Knowledge Exchange Concordat of which both partner institutions are signatories.
Aim:
TISMA will support the development of early career researchers (ECRs), technical, and professional staff across the two partners institutions as well as a diverse range of collaborators by:
Objectives:
Deliver a targeted training programme aimed at building human capital. This will provide TISMA participants with the opportunity to identify what placements would be beneficial for their career development and increase the capabilities of the pipeline of support in tackling infectious animal diseases and welfare.
Deliver a series of open competitive funding calls for placements. Separate workstreams will focus on ECRs, technical staff, professional staff and broader academic participants ensuring a diversity of participants and allowing a flexibility often missing from similar training and placement accelerators. These workstreams will cut across policy, industry and the third sector allowing all participants to actively target the mobility placements that best match their needs.
Create resources to enable sector learning on enhanced knowledge exchange, skills development and sharing innovation between sections through mobility activities.
Activities will predominantly focus on the priority theme of "tackling infections" with research areas related to infectious animal diseases and welfare, plant health, zoonosis and AMR being in scope. Activities may also cut across other themes including data-intensive bioscience, engineering biology and health across the life course.
While TISMA will embrace the competitive nature of an open funding call, and all the benefits this can bring, several collaborators and potential hosts have already been identified with agreements in place to explore placements during the second stage of the project. These potential hosts represent a huge diversity across the tackling infections strategic theme, including industry placements; such as with Zoetis, the world's largest producer of medicine and vaccinations for pets and livestock, policy placements; including the House of Lords Library, research placements including the British Parasitology Society the Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute and third-sector organisations; such as LifeArc Opportunities Assessment Group, Knowsley Safari and the charity Sightsavers and international academic institutions such as Nagasaki University in Japan.
Benefits:
Short term benefits will be realised though creating new connections and strengthening existing relationships with industry, policymakers and wider community stakeholders. TISMA will also benefit the wider research culture within the partnering institutions, supporting career development activities in line with our commitments to the Researcher Development Concordat and Technician Commitment. It will build on and complement existing activities designed to support staff in exploring careers in a range of sectors, particularly in the LSTM 'Ignite' mentoring and 'Prosper' career development programmes. The six-month 'Prosper' programme, ending in April 2024, is supporting a cohort of 16 staff to understand and explore career opportunities across different sectors.
To ensure sustainable impact and share learnings beyond the TISMA partners and collaborators we will also produce and disseminate, case studies from individual mobility placements that will benefit future similar career development activities across the sector. In the medium to long term this will also have impact by delivering against our individual institutional KE strategies, building capacity, engagement and partnership principles of the Knowledge Exchange Concordat of which both partner institutions are signatories.
