On Tuesday 6th July, we held RAD’s first Dementia Research Meets Motorsport Innovation Accelerator, in partnership with Cranfield University and the DEMON Network.
This competitive team workshop was a huge success, not only generating some fantastic ideas, but emphasising that in order to accelerate research we need collaboration between industries, amongst scientists and across institutions. A clear theme for the day was the importance in sharing data, research, successes and failures in order to drive us forward to beat dementia.
Dementia scientists and motorsports experts were allocated to teams and asked to generate ideas on “What one thing could dramatically accelerate dementia research?” .
They were guided through the process of idea generation and proposal development for a hypothetical £20,000 seed grant to kick start their big idea. The teams were then required to present their ideas “Dragon’s Den” style in a 5-minute pitch. The judging panel were Prof. Siddharthen Chandran, Prof. David Llewellyn and Duncan Bradley (formerly of McLaren Applied Technology).
We're delighted to share their presentations and the winners announcement here.
Congratulations to the 'red team' comprising of Dr Xin You Tai (University of Oxford), Gabriel Mateus Bernardo Harrington (Keele University), Dr Cameron Shand (UCL), Dr Claire Durrant (University of Edinburgh), Jimmy Headdon (McLaren) and Paul Tombs of the Cranfield (Alum).
At the end of the event, Sir Jackie announced the opening of the RAD Seed Grant – a £20,000 grant for the best proposal for accelerating progress in dementia research. See our website for details.
Thank you to everyone who took part, we hope you enjoyed the day and hope to see you at the next RAD event!
