Speaker 1: my presentation. So the title of the presentation is critical success factors for the effective management and efficient management of multidisciplinary research. Needless to say, so a bit of my own background, just like the previous speaker, Nicholas, I'm actually an engineer and spent a couple of years both in project engineering and in research on a personal basis and since then I've retired and I now have my own consultancy. I've been a bit under the weather, I'm just recovered today, so I'm going to be speaking a bit slow. Yeah, so indeed, so we're all familiar of the importance of interdisciplinary research. We come from an area where there is mono or single disciplinary and then we go into a more disciplined, but with multidisciplinary, the important thing is in order to address some of the complex issues and emerging challenges, we need more than a multidisciplinary. So I'm postulating interdisciplinary research. Examples of what the world has gone through, for instance, COVID, how to understand the cause and effects and what actually happened, we've got to get many people from across the globe, especially to understand what actually happened and how to come up with the vaccines. Another one probably would be the tsunami that we had and again, you have multiple agencies coming together. So indeed, when it comes to addressing complex issues and indeed today as we move on, issues are getting more and more complex, not because the engineering problems have escalated or it's become more difficult, but I think society in itself has become more complex. I take note of what Nicholas has shared earlier, where we look into areas where culture and civilization, they do play an important aspect of it as well. And here we got in here, it's got all these different fields that you can see what would a multi or interdisciplinary research entail. Yeah, so there are benefits of interdisciplinary research because that allows us to have a holistic perspective and a comprehensive view of the solution. It's important that in any research, as I think one of the previous keynote speakers already addressed, we got to understand what is actually the problem statement. And once we fully understand a problem statement, then we start to look at, before we can come up with some solutions, it's important that we identify also the stakeholders and the different disciplines and the different, who will, and I think in today's research, which is addressing real world problems, you really need to have almost the entire, all disciplines, both in academia and in industry, and also for the society to all come together. And of course, to get their, to get what we call a stakeholder engagement. This will also bring about innovative ideas and breakthrough discoveries when you have experts from different fields, when they collaborate, because then they bring very unique perspectives. They come as experts from their own field. They're able to give us a, look at it, look at the, and look at a problem in a different dimension from a different perspective and bring to the table a solution. And this will definitely foster innovation and groundbreaking discoveries, which is not possible with a single or with just a limited discipline of discipline experts. So there are definitely obvious benefits of interdisciplinary research. So like any work that comes together, there must be an element of being able to run, research is like a project. So project management is important. And therefore, while we have got scholars on the call here this afternoon, they may not be equipped with project management skills. And therefore, project management is so important because they are different elements of the project management framework. For instance, we got to get a stakeholder engagement and collaboration involving the key stakeholders. And therefore, in your mapping, you would identify who are your key stakeholders. They could be from engineering, they could be from the medical field, it could be from academia, but more importantly, I think for those outside the end users of the research, if that research is going to eventually become something that will be turned into a product that can be used by society, then we got to get the buy-in from the society early on in the research. So it enables fostering a collaboration to have this shared vision of where we want to go with a product or with a research that we have in hand. And they often provide the collective responsibility for the project success. For a project to be successful, it is really a responsibility that's collected collectively by all who have been identified. And another very important thing, I think, is to have very clear objectives. We mentioned earlier already. But what's more important probably is also timelines. When we get different stakeholders or different departments, even within a university or across countries, if it's going to be a global work, it's important that timelines are set because stakeholders will be able to give us only resources and make resources available for the time that one would be committed to a research project. It also ensures that the project is on track. And more importantly, that resources are allocated accordingly. And so that there is no wastage of resources because wastage of resources amounts to money's use or salaries paid if the research work is not progressing. And therefore, effective project management skills are important for researchers. Another area would be to have a very structured approach to solving global issues. And it's probably the kind of research that we're talking about here whereby it's got to be managed properly because it's when we start to address some of the world's global issues. At COP28, we got all the world leaders coming together in Dubai just last week. So this way, we need to have a very deterministic implementation plan, a very well-defined plan. What do we want to do with very clearly outlined steps and who's going to do what? And because this will then increase the likelihood of successfully addressing the issues that we have at hand. And climate change is on everybody. Everybody talks about it today. And it's something which any kind of research work that's going to go in that area needs to be focused. Another thing we got to do is we got to ensure that we keep things on track. We got to have metrics which are measurable. And we should also do a critical assessment of what is being delivered to ensure that once they are assessed, it's so that they are evaluated effectively. And in this way, there would be continual improvement part of the quality management system, ISO 9001, to ensure that there's continual improvement and things which are, if it's off track a little bit, it's got to be brought back again. And through interdisciplinary research projects, this would be very key. And so some of the critical subsets, I don't have many, I've just I've just numbered three altogether. But they are actually in big groups. The importance of collaboration. I think we spoke a lot about that already just now. But the importance also of communicating. When you have a diverse team, may be working in-house or across borders. It's important that communication, the lines of communication remain open. Because in that way, in that way, things gets, things gets done faster. And it should be an ongoing thing. It's just like working in an office where people talk and discuss things all the time. Between researchers from the diverse disciplines are crucial for such projects. So collaborate. Yes, we know that. We know that experts from diverse fields can deliver more using based on their own experts opinion. But the important thing is, how do we collaborate? How do we communicate? It's not uncommon that researchers are working in silos. They feel very comfortable working in that kind of, in that kind of environment. But we cannot when it comes to a bigger research involving multidisciplines. The other one would be on diversity inclusivity. The team is going to be diverse. It's got to include, no one, no one no one, no one should be excluded for whatever reason. It should, it's not only involves, it's not not only, I think I saw in someone's slide today, also on gender. So that includes both, both male, male and female. It should also include people of various, people of various interests in, in, in, in, in that research topic. And we should ensure that as we, as we scan, as we scan the landscape, we should ensure that everyone is involved in that in terms of diversity inclusivity. And that way, we would be able to foster innovative solutions. Innovative solutions. And, and of course, the, again, very important is the allocation of, of resources, because it involves cost, involves time, proper allocation and management of resources. How many, how big is going to be the research team? Who are, who are the people who are going to be collaborating across, across universities, across, across governments, across nations? More reportedly, what about funding? The funding of, and, and, and, and personnel, all these, it's going to cost money. And therefore research funds, if they're not managed properly, before the research product is delivered, they may run out of funding. And therefore, again, a good, very good financial management is important for the success of interdisciplinary research projects. I think I'll come to my last slide now. Yeah. So in conclusion, some of the, some of the key points, this research offers a holistic approach to tackling complex issues. It requires an effective project management system or framework. The critical success factors, there are many, the three that have been mentioned to be taken into account. And next, what do we do? What's the call to action for promoting this? Again, interdisciplinary collaboration and implementing the different identified critical success factors, which have been identified and, and focus should be put on them. And in that way, we'll be able to address not only the local issues or regional issues, but I think even the bigger issues at a global level. And this will indeed will bring about solutions which are effective and impactful. With that, I think that's my last slide. Thank you very much.