Alliances for Research Challenges

Alliances for Research Challenges (ARCs) connect Scotland’s research excellence to Scotland’s national challenges.

ARCs aim to:

• Coordinate the research community across disciplines, institutions and sectors.
• Leverage additional funding into our system.
• Connect Scottish Government priorities with areas of strength within our publicly funded research system.

ARCs fulfil the recommendation within SFC’s Review of Tertiary Education and Research to create next-generation networks that build on our sustained investment in the Research Pooling Initiative with a focus on interdisciplinary challenge-oriented research collaboration, leveraging additional funding and fostering early career researcher communities and training.

SFC provides funding to support the following ARCs:

Scottish Alliance for Food: Health, equity and sustainability

The Scottish Alliance for Food (SCAF) is a collaborative initiative bringing together perspectives from social, natural, and applied sciences, arts and humanities, to address critical emerging research questions related to building a better food future for all.

Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods

By bringing together researchers, industry, business, policy, and community partners, this cross-sectoral interdisciplinary alliance will work with the country’s households to achieve a sustainable net zero transition.

Brain Health Alliance

The Brain Health Alliance aims to create and support new cross sectoral, multidisciplinary collaborations with a shared vision of improving our nation’s brain health.

Whilst each ARC will has a designated host institution as its administrative lead, these Alliances include broad representation from across the Scottish higher education sector.

The following ARC is currently under development:

Quantum Technologies (University of Glasgow)

We expect to make a further announcement about this in late Spring.

Further information

For further information please contact Dr Charlotte Matheson, Senior Policy Officer, Research and Innovation, email: cmatheson@sfc.ac.uk.