Our work package leader - Rita Clancy
Within the SOLIDBAT project, Rita Clancy from EURIDA Research Management leads Work Package 8, which focuses on maximising the project’s impact through strategic communication, dissemination, and exploitation of results. Her work ensures that SOLIDBAT reaches scientific, industrial, policy, and non-expert audiences alike, helping to translate complex findings into meaningful knowledge and paving the way for future commercialisation of solid-state battery technologies.
Which are the challenges of WP8, hence using research results via communication & exploitation.
The main challenges in WP8 lie in planning and implementing effective and targeted actions that create real impact for a project beyond its duration and its core community. While more common dissemination activities such as scientific publications and conferences are proven means to reach scientific and technology stakeholders, smart communication and exploitation strategies must address wider stakeholders, including non-expert groups, who may benefit from project results in the long term and who may hold important knowledge on non-scientific aspects that may be relevant for the success or failure of a novel technology. To achieve this, we must avoid communication gaps with project key findings not reaching stakeholders effectively, or the lack of practical application due to the misalignment between academic and technology goals and real-world needs. Other challenges involve creating channels through which wider audiences can be reached, translating technical jargon into easy-to-understand language for non-scientists without over-simplification, overselling technology by making claims that are not yet substantiated by results or data, avoiding or overcoming people’s misperceptions of new technologies and concepts, but also addressing researcher bias that affects objectivity towards their own concepts and progress and dealing with limitations in data robustness and accessibility.
Which achievements do you foresee?
Main achievement of WP8 will be SOLIDBAT’s contribution to a solid-state battery ecosystem that will, besides providing a technical pathway to a novel battery technology, benefit from newly generated knowledge and a deeper understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that SSBs and similar energy storage solutions may face on the way to commercialisation. This means effective and meaningful dissemination and communication formats that target the wide range of audiences along the whole value chain that is addressed in SOLIDBAT, spanning from materials research to battery development and manufacturing, and to assessing industrial needs and restrictions as well as economic, environmental and wider societal impacts. A more specific achievement we foresee in this context is to establish SOLIDBAT as platform for intense stakeholder dialogues with external experts from industry, end users, policy and regulatory bodies to discuss expectations, limitations and key partnerships for SSBs on the way to market. Even more specific outputs will include the ‘corporate’ project branding and online presence, scientific publications and conferences and SOLIDBAT events, stakeholder meetings and the systematic documentation and use of retrieved insight and its possible use, evidence-based decision-making tools and policy input for future European strategies as well as a SOLIDBAT business case and an Exploitation Roadmap that outlines the way to industrialisation and commercialisation of the SOLIDBAT solid-state battery and a sound plan which pathways we will use after SOLIDBAT will have ended.
Which synergies do you expect to with partners?
To make WP8 truly meaningful, the contributions and commitment of all project partners will be crucial. All partners will provide their insight, expertise, project results and existing stakeholder networks to shape content, reach experts for Panel meetings, design interesting and catchy project materials and verified knowledge and data for science, technology, industry, policy and regulatory frameworks. In return, WP8 will systematically collect and document feedback from external stakeholders and create feedback loops to all technical workpackages. This feedback can be used to focus the research and development work and strengthen the SOLIDBAT concept further.
Give a personal perspective: what do you like/enjoy/expect from the experience of being a WPL?
Being a WPL, especially in a transversal WP like WP8 gives me and my colleagues at EURIDA the chance to proactively work towards creating maximum impact from a project. From the project start, even already while working on a project concept, one gets the chance to develop and implement a meaningful and tailored strategy that addresses project visibility, working with scientific peers, engaging with non-scientific stakeholders, and bringing people together from very different backgrounds who usually do not work closely together at earlier stages of novel technologies. This is very challenging but invigorating for oneself and the entire project, especially when first language hurdles or initial scepticism are overcome. Bringing different and often controversial perspectives to the table, finding a common language and, eventually working towards a common goal, is a highly rewarding experience and in my experience is only possible when you get the chance to lead a WP. In addition, one continuously extends one’s own network and partnership, which helps with future work and impact creation in research and innovation projects in the battery field.