A core objective of the ART of Healthy Ageing Network is to provide interdisciplinary training and a supportive environment in which early career researchers can thrive - essential to building interdisciplinary research capacity and in expanding the pipeline of future research leaders in this field. Exposure to a myriad of different perspectives both from academics in other disciplines and stakeholders opens up new opportunities and provides a fertile breeding ground for the development of novel collaborations, ideas and approaches.

Highlighted below are the many ways in which we support and engage with our ECR community.

Q&A with our co-investigators

Dr Kelly Bowden Davies (our ECR lead) and Dr Sandra Ortega-Martorell discuss their career journeys, current research and roles within the Network - please click here to read more.

ECR workshop

An ECR survey and subsequent focus groups run in the second half of 2022 highlighted the need of our ECR community for skills development in interdisciplinary collaboration. In response we devised a 1-day interactive workshop in collaboration with external facilitators, The Collective.  This was hosted in Manchester on 3 July 2023 – please click here to read and see more.

Online events

Continuing our work to support and develop interdisciplinary collaborations, in October 2024 we hosted an online event to showcase our pump-priming projects. The PIs described their funded work and reflected on leading interdisciplinary projects and building capacity in translational ageing research. Of these 4 projects, 3 are led by ECR, and all align with the main objectives of the Network and exemplify interdisciplinary collaboration and our work to support ECR. Please click here to read more.

ISTRC 2023

The ART of Healthy Ageing Network provided funding for a number of Early Career Researchers to attend the International Sarcopenia Translational Research Conference (ISTRC) in October 2023. All ECR who submitted abstracts to the conference were eligible to apply for a funded place. We received 27 applications and the ART of Healthy Ageing Network awarded funding for registration to 10 applicants, including students and post-doctoral research associates.

Please click here to learn more about the ECR who were awarded funding from the Network to attend the conference, the conference prize winners and the ART of Healthy Ageing Networking breakfast.