In this series, we share short interviews to introduce you to the diverse partners contributing to our LUMEN vision. Each month, we’ll shine a spotlight on two of our partners—offering a glimpse into who they are, what they do, and what drives their work within LUMEN. In this edition, Diane Morrow & Kathy-Ann Fletcher answered our questions.
Can you briefly introduce your organisation and its role within the LUMEN project?
Abertay University, located in Dundee, Scotland, is renowned for its focus on applied learning and digital technologies. We excel in areas like computer games education, cybersecurity, and ethical hacking. Within the LUMEN project, we will lead on user research and co-design to involve the voice of the user, which underpins validity during use case testing. Abertay has previously led several WPs in European Projects, focusing on user research. As a member of the OPERAS research infrastructure, Abertay University is strongly positioned to understand the key challenges of partners in developing services that meet users’ needs in the long term, across wide disciplinary domains.
What is the most exciting aspect of your contribution to LUMEN, and how does it align with your organisation’s mission or values?
Our work in the LUMEN project is about ensuring the tools and platforms are truly user-centred. We are excited by the direct impact our contribution will have on making the users daily work practices more efficient and effective. We are leveraging our expertise in user experience to support the development of the tool which will be grounded in empirical evidence, and designed to be intuitive, and user-friendly. Therefore, we are directly shaping the experience of researchers across diverse academic fields in a collaborative and rewarding way. Working closely with researchers from various disciplines including Maths, SSH, ESS and MD, is a unique opportunity to learn from and contribute to an interdisciplinary open science network. This aligns with Abertay University’s mission of fostering innovation and using our expertise to solve real-world challenges. The opportunity to leave a lasting impact on how research is conducted makes this project a priority for our team. Furthermore, our ethical considerations within the project are of great importance to Abertay. Ensuring that technology is guided through FAIR research principles with integrity, is a core value of our institution. We are thrilled to be part of a project that prioritizes these ethical research practices with responsible innovation.
LUMEN is all about interdisciplinary collaboration. How do you envision the project transforming the way research is conducted?
LUMEN’s interdisciplinary approach has the potential to transform research by breaking through traditional academic limits and building a collaborative environment for the free, open flow of knowledge. We envision the project creating a culture where researchers from diverse fields can seamlessly integrate their expertise to solve problems facing the world from interdisciplinary perspectives which can help produce more sustainable outcomes for humanity. The open nature of the platforms and tools will encourage the findability, and sharing of data; including methodologies and perspectives. This may support addressing complex challenges more achievable and encourage innovative approaches to problem-solving that surpasses the current siloed, individual disciplines. We believe LUMEN’s solutions will accelerate discovery to ensure that research outputs are relevant and applicable to everyday challenges. When the project is completed and up-and-running, we see LUMEN as a viable model for research that encourages open science, and human-centred interdisciplinary collaboration through research innovation. Therefore, LUMEN’s legacy will guide a holistic approach to future research, problem solving and societal progress.
Looking ahead to 2027 and beyond, what impact do you hope the LUMEN project will have on the broader research community and beyond?
Looking ahead to the completion of the LUMEN project, we hope that the standard is raised for collaborative research and innovation in ethical and FAIR open research. We project that LUMEN will influence creativity in research methodologies and approaches across disciplines. We hope that the user-centric, intuitive platforms make knowledge sharing easier and more feasible across disciplines and regions. We want to be able through LUMEN to show the tangible benefits of research not only on the research community but also wider society. We want to show that digital resources supported by emerging technologies can be human-centred and innovative while serving the interests of diverse stakeholders.