medical research commercialisation fund

« back to directory

Company Profile

Medical research commercialisation fund.

• http://www.mrcf.com.au/

About Medical Research Commercialisation Fund

The MRCF Collaboration, established and managed by Brandon Capital Partners, provides seed and venture capital investment to support the development and growth of Australian and New Zealand life science companies. The MRCF is a unique collaboration between major Australian superannuation funds, over 50 leading medical research institutes and research hospitals in Australia and New Zealand and CSL. The MRCF supports the development and commercialisation of biomedical discoveries originating from these member research organisations, providing both capital and expertise to guide the successful development of new therapies. Current MRCF funds are the MRCF3 ($200 million) and the MRCF-BTF ($230 million). The MRCF is supported by the Australian and New Zealand governments, as well as the state governments of Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory

$19.75 million MRFF program

$47 million MRFF program

$32 million MRFF program

$45 million MRFF program

$22.3 million MRFF program

$15.6 million DISR program

Adelaide Intermediary Program

WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub

Australian Antimicrobial Resistance Network

Your browser is not supported. Upgrade to a different browser to experience this site.

• Skip to Content
• Skip to Navigation
• Text only version
• Industry Engagement
• Programs, awards and conferences

Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF)

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) was established in  2007 and is a collaboration among Australia’s major  superannuation funds, Australia’s leading medical research institutes and research hospitals. MRCF has secured a total of $380 million over three separate funding rounds in investment capital.

All rounds, running from 2007 through to 2022,have been supported on behalf of the WA State Government by the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation (JTSI) together with the Department of Health.

The WA State government’s financial support has led to access to substantial investment in two of the State’s medical companies with a commitment of $26 million, subject to milestones, in the past two years.

This has led to 22 jobs being created in the newly established companies of OncoRes and Respirion

Pictured-Christine, Isobel, Ruby and Gerald Donaldson – The family of two girls with cystic fibrosis are hopeful after Telethon Kids Institute spin-off company, Respirion, receives $20 million in funding to develop a promising new therapy

OncoRes Medical

OncoRes Medical is an intraoperative imaging technology company that assesses the completeness of tumour removal during surgery. The company won the Global Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 in the Pitch@Palace competition that was held at St James Palace, London on December 12, 2018.

The award provides access to a network of potential investors and will be valuable for Series B fundraising.

https://www.oncoresmedical.com/

Respirion Pharmaceuticals

Founded in 2018, Respirion Pharmaceuticals is an early-stage biotechnology company focused on developing new treatments for respiratory disease.  The company is a spinoff  of the Telethon Kids Institute (TKI)  where the technology was developed. The company is developing the technology both in Australia and in the United States.

Telethon Kids Institute Announcement

For further information please contact: Dr Helga Mikkelsen, Investment Analyst at Brandon Capital who manages the MRCF.

[email protected]

Ph:  0491 277 662 

www.brandoncapital.com.au

Also in this section

Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF)

What is the medical research commercialisation fund.

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund is an innovative investment collaboration which invests in life science opportunities from its member medical research institutes and their associated hospitals throughout Australia.

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund is a unique collaboration between CSL, major Australian superannuation funds, the Australian and New Zealand governments, Australian state governments and over 40 leading medical research institutes and research hospitals.

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund provides its Members with a range of benefits, including:

• An early-stage fund dedicated to supporting the development and commercialisation of early-stage medical technologies;
• Access to risk-tolerant investment capital to support the development of promising technologies,
• Involvement in and exposure to the Investment Review process; and
• The investors gain access to promising technologies emanating from the Member Institutes.

Established in 2007, investment funding from the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) is available to promising opportunities from its 50 member institutes.

The MRCF’s investors are AustralianSuper, Statewide Super, HESTA, HOSTPLUS and the Australian Government under its IIF program. The MRCF acknowledges support from the State Governments of Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia.

Medical Research Commercialisation Fund is managed by Brandon Capital Partners, a life science fund manager, and each member institute nominates a representative to the Investment Review Committee (IRC). The MRCF has received $30 million in funding from superannuation funds and $20 million from the Federal Government’s IIF program.

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund provides funding of $200,000 to $2 million for any one project, investing up to $1 million on its own, and reserves the second $1 million for further rounds of investment made alongside co-investors. It also provides financial and strategic management assistance.

Eligibility

Eligible applicants include medical research institutes. The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund invests exclusively in opportunities from its member institutes.

Eligible activities include opportunities with milestone-based development programs requiring smaller first round financial commitments to generate further exemplification of the technology.

Application for the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund are open on an ongoing basis.

Current Projects

To date, the MRCF has supported more than 40 promising start-up companies, with over 85 percent of them founded by the MRCF.

Aravax Aravax’s mission is to revolutionise the lives of those with peanut allergy by removing the risk of life-threatening reactions to peanuts.

Pathios Therapeutics Pathios are engaged in a fully-enabled drug discovery program to identify novel small-molecule modulators of GPR65 with expected utility in cancer and certain autoimmune conditions.

George Medicines George Medicines is developing treatments designed to provide improved clinical outcomes among patients with cardiometabolic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, which remain the leading causes of premature death and disability worldwide.

PolyActiva PolyActiva is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of ocular implants that provide controlled delivery of drugs to both the front and back of the eye.

Certa Therapeutics Certa Therapeutics novel drugs block a receptor that is a key driver of fibrosis (scarring) of the kidney. Certa is able to use genetic analysis to identify those patients that are most likely to benefit from therapy.

Azura Ophthalmics Azura Ophthalmics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company headquartered in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Azura Ophthalmics is developing an innovative portfolio of compounds in combination with a novel drug delivery platform to advance a portfolio of treatments for Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), the leading cause of dry eye disease.

Cincera Therapeutics Cincera Therapeutics (Cincera) is developing range of potent and orally available inhibitors of a key enzymatic target in a lipid metabolism pathway as medicaments for the treatment of NAFLD/NASH and other indications ranging from insulin resistance to CKD and cancer.

EBR Systems EBR Systems is developing a revolutionary wireless cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) device, WiSE™ to overcome the longstanding issues associated with conventional CRT implants. WiSE™ is a small leadless endocardial implant that is powered by an externally implanted battery transmitter unit. The technology enables clinicians to place the endocardial implant anywhere within the ventricle, based on ideal therapeutic locations.

Ena Therapeutics Ena Therapeutics is a biotechnology company aiming to transform the treatment and prevention of respiratory infections. The company initial focus is to target respiratory infections in patients with asthma and COPD.

Okogen Okogen is a biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics to help patients with ophthalmic diseases. The lead candidate is OKG-0301, a potent, broad-spectrum antiviral that functions intracellularly to inhibit viral replication and reduce inflammation.

OncoRes Medical OncoRes Medical is developing an imaging technology that will provide intraoperative information to surgeons to assist with the identification of tumour and healthy tissue.

Q-Sera Q-Sera has developed a gold standard serum tube, with a fast turn-around time that can be manufactured for universal implementation. For many years, the industry has recognized the need for a tube that rapidly produces high quality serum from all blood. Q-Sera’s technology has been developed to meet these needs and uses synthetically produced pro-coagulant proteins called prothrombin activators. The technology was inspired by the venom of some snakes (including the Australian Taipan) that have a potent ability to coagulate the blood.

QUE Oncology QUE Oncology is a clinical stage company focussed on developing Q-122 for the treatment of hot flashes in cancer survivors undergoing endocrine therapy.

Vaxxas Vaxxas’ proprietary Nanopatch™ vaccine delivery platform provides an optimized, differentiated needle-free vaccine delivery solution that safely and cost effectively amplifies vaccine efficacy.

Denteric Denteric is developing vaccines that target the major virulence factors produced by the bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis (P gingivalis) and related species. In so doing, its primary goal is to provide options to treat and prevent severe periodontal disease and its complications, a condition which affects approximately 1 in 10 people globally.

Longas Longas has developed Morphoseq™, a disruptive technology designed to dramatically improve the performance of industry-standard NGS platforms, by increasing effective read lengths, with benefits in accuracy and cost efficiency. Morphoseq effectively converts short read sequencers into virtual ‘long read’ sequencers, enabling finished-quality genome assemblies with high accuracy, including resolution of difficult-to-assemble genomic regions.

Respirion Respirion Pharmaceuticals (Respirion) is developing a novel antibiotic therapy for the treatment of the inherited life-threatening disease, Cystic Fibrosis (CF).

Global Kinetics Global Kinetics: Corporation provides point of care measurement and reporting of Parkinson’s disease (PD).

MecRx MecRx is developing small molecule inhibitors of cMyc, a protein that is deregulated in over 70% of all human cancers. The company has strategic partnerships with Australia’s leading integrated cancer centre, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Australia’s premier government research organisation, CSIRO.

OccuRx OccuRx is a biopharmaceutical company focused on innovative therapeutic strategies for ocular diseases associated with inflammation and fibrosis.

Osprey Medical Osprey Medical is developing the CINCOR(tm) System for advanced kidney protection during coronary interventions.

More Information

What is the #1 grant for start-ups.

12,000+ companies access the R&D tax incentive per year that yields a CASH REBATE of up to 43.5%. This might be perfect your start up. Do you want to know more?

• What exactly is the R&D Tax Incentive?
• How can my startup qualify?
• What defines eligible R&D activities?
• What expenditure can be claimed?
• How do I calculate the potential rebate?
• How can I identify if my product qualiies for R&D?
• What is the process to apply?
• How can I best document my R&D?
• What are common misconceptions about it?
• How can we help you through this process?

Bulletpoint is a Melbourne-based consultancy specialising in guiding businesses through the complex process of the R&D tax incentive. With a decade of experience under our belt, we’re proud to be led by Australia’s highest-rated R&D tax consultant. We’ve successfully lodged over 500 R&D claims, demonstrating a proven track record.

Our approach is straightforward and personable, focusing on cutting through the jargon to help businesses truly understand the definition of R&D in government terms. We’re passionate about what we do, and our clients appreciate this, often commenting on the difference our expertise has made to their businesses. They’ve praised us for uncovering grants they wouldn’t have otherwise known about and for making the whole process less stressful for them.

We’re proud to have an average rating of 4.8 stars from over 250 Google reviews. Despite our success, we continue to strive for improvement, learning from every piece of feedback we receive.

At Bulletpoint, we excel in helping businesses navigate the complexities of the R&D tax incentive process, ensuring they reap the benefits they deserve. As experts in our field, we’re well-versed in what works and what doesn’t when it comes to aligning businesses’ perceptions of R&D with the government’s eligibility criteria.

So, if you’re looking for accessible expertise and a proven success rate, you’ll find it with us at Bulletpoint. We’re ready to guide you through the R&D tax incentive process with a blend of professionalism and personality, ensuring your experience with us is not just successful, but enjoyable as well.

Top 10 Consultant Tips to Maximise the R&D Tax Incentive

• Info & Links
• or New User Registration

Due to the Reconciliation Day Public Holiday, the GrantConnect Helpdesk will be unavailable on Monday 27 May 2024. The Helpdesk will recommence on Tuesday 28 May 2024 at 9:00am (AEST).

Forecast Opportunity View - MRFF 2024 BioMedTech Incubator

Medical Research Future Fund 2024 BioMedTech Incubator grant opportunity

Contact Details

Business Grants Hub

Phone: 13 28 46

Email Address: [email protected]

The 2024 BioMedTech Grant Opportunity is part of the  Medical Research Future Fund  and the Medical Research Commercialisation Initiative.

This opportunity looks to fund suitable organisations to identify, select and support Australian SMEs undertaking early-stage medical research and medical innovation projects that have commercial potential.

The intended outcome of the research funded by this grant opportunity is to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians by increasing the number of SMEs developing novel biomarkers, diagnostics, therapeutics, assistive devices and/or digital technologies that have progressed through the early stages of research and development to the point where they are ‘de-risked’ and attractive to private investment for commercialisation.

Applicants may propose to support development of innovations in their area/s of strength (i.e. applicants are not required to propose a program that covers the breadth of the biomedtech sector).

• Investment Portfolio
• Responsible Investing
• Brandon BioCatalyst

Brandon Capital Partners launches new Medical Research Commercialisation Fund, seeks NZ institutional

May 1, 2019

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), Australasia’s largest life sciences investment fund, today launches its fifth fund, the MRCF5.

The MRCF5 has recently completed its first close, raising NZ$224 million(AU$210 million) from the MRCF’s existing investors. This brings total funds under management to more than NZ$747m (AU$700m), making fund manager, Brandon Capital Partners, Australasia’s largest venture capital firm based on capital managed.

Brandon Capital is now looking to approach select institutional investors to raise an additional NZ$43M, to complete a second close at NZ$267m (AU$250m).  Brandon Capital will be initiating conversations with New Zealand institutional investors in the hope that some of this capital may come from New Zealand investors, to support the increasing activity of the fund in New Zealand.

The new fund will focus on investing in early stage medical research discoveries linked to MRCF members, a network of more than 50 leading medical research institutes and hospitals across Australia and New Zealand. MRCF5 will replace MRCF3 which has backed 16 new start-up companies over the last four years and is now fully committed and reserved. The $230m MRCF BTF (MRCF4), supported by the Australian government, is still actively investing in later-stage Australianbiomedical companies that have progressed to clinical studies.

MRCF CEO and Brandon Capital Managing Director, Dr Chris Nave says, “This is an exciting opportunity for us to continue to capitalise on the world-leading medical research capabilities in Australia and New Zealand, developing homegrown biomedical innovations into life-saving therapies and supporting the local innovation ecosystem. Our previous early-stage fund, MRCF3, has now built a portfolio of 16 exciting new companies, 8 of which have progressed their assets from the pre-clinical stage to human trials. The capital remaining in MRCF3 has been reserved to support the existing portfolio and therefore, it was time for us to raise our next early-stage fund, MRCF5”.

“We’re seeking New Zealand institutional investors that may be interested in joining the Australian superannuation funds in the MRCF5 fund, which will be dedicated to commercialising the very best medical discoveries being developed in Australia and New Zealand.”

The MRCF is a unique collaboration between major Australian superannuation funds, the Australian and New Zealand governments, Australian state governments and more than 50 leading medical research institutes and research hospitals.

New Zealand MRCF member institutes include Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, University of Auckland; Institute for Innovation in Biotech, University of Auckland; Brain Health Research Centre, University of Otago; Ferrier Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington; Callaghan Innovation and Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.

The strong flow of exciting early stage medical opportunities coming out of Australian and New Zealand research institutes has driven the need to create the new fund, with the first investments for the MRCF5 identified.

MRCF New Zealand Investment Manager Duncan Mackintosh says, “The MRCF collaboration is unique in that it is made up of a network of member institutes, which provide the medical innovations and technical development capabilities. We assist by providing the capital and expertise to help guide them through the development and commercialisation pathways. This often involves establishing a company and putting in place a management team, in addition to providing the funding well before clinical trials or commercialisation.”

“New Zealand boasts some of the world’s best biomedical researchers, but historically there has been a lack of capital available for early-stage biotechnology companies and commercialisation expertise within the academic sector, limited by scale. The MRCF provides companies with vital capital through various stages of development, and works hand in hand with researchers and technology transfer groups to commercialise researchinto therapies that benefit public health globally.”

The MRCF model was created by Brandon Capital and is the first true partnering between research organisations and multi-billion-dollar superannuation funds globally to help drive innovation translation. Brandon Capital has received the backing of Australian superannuation funds including AustralianSuper, Hostplus, HESTA, and Statewide Super, who realise the benefits of venture capital in creating returns for their superannuates and also future industry and jobs for the countries. CSL, Australia’s largest biotechnology company, is also an investor in the MRCF Funds.

“We commend the NZ government on introducing the Research & Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) as forward-thinking, future-focused policies such as this will help catalyse New Zealand’s successful life science economy. Now more than ever, bipartisan political support for venture capital growth and innovation, alongside strong policies and programs are crucial not only for New Zealand’s success in the sector, but the country’s economy too,” Dr Nave says.

Brandon Capital developed the MRCF model to enable the capital markets to engage with scientists to help bridge the funding gap that occurs when therapeutic candidates need to progress from the lab bench to the human testing phase. At the time, no other funds existed for such early-stage biomedical research translation in Australia or New Zealand, and no one was prepared to fund the gap.

In 2007, Brandon convinced seven medical research institutes in New South Wales and Victoria, supported by those State Governments, to join the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) collaboration when it established its first fund with NZ$32m (AUD$30m) under management.

Brandon also saw a unique opportunity for Australian superannuation funds to help finance some of the most promising biomedical innovations coming out of Australia. Brandon thought that super funds could be interested in investing in opportunities which improve the future health of the nation, while at the same time accessing strong deal flows offering above market-average returns.

Since 2008, Brandon Capital managed funds have invested in more than 40 companies, many of which were founded by the MRCF. MRCF-backed medical devices companies Global Kinetics Corporation (GKC) and Osprey Medical have both brought products to market and are experiencing strong growth. GKC, spun out of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health, is now selling its novel Parkinson’s disease monitoring system in 17 countries, while Osprey Medical, spun out of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, is growing sales of its dye reduction system for use in coronary angiography procedures across the United States.

Other Brandon managed companies that have had positive exits include: Elastagen (acquired by Allergan in 2018), Spinifex (acquired by Novartis in 2015) and Fibrotech (acquired by Shire in 2014). A dozen other companies, including, Aravax, Azura, Certa Therapeutics, EBR Systems, OncoRes Medical, PolyActiva, Que Oncology and Vaxxas currently have products in advancing clinical development.

Level 9, 31 Queen Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

Phone +61 3 9657 0700

Email: [email protected]

Suite 2.05, 1 York Street

Sydney NSW 2000

Phone +61 2 8227 7080

San Francisco

Brandon Capital LLC

1 Letterman Ave, Suite C3-330

San Francisco, CA 94129

The Gridiron Building, 1 Pancras Square

Kings Cross, London N1C 4AG

United Kingdom

For media inquiries, contact

Kirrily Davis

[email protected]

+61 401 220 228

© Copyright 2024 Brandon Capital Partners

Quick links

• Climate change
• COVID-19 research
• Staff profiles

$4m investment to accelerate drug discovery

Thanks to a creative risk-sharing agreement with CSIRO, Melbourne start-up biotech company MecRx has secured a $4 million investment from the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) to advance its breakthrough technology for accelerating drug discovery.

23 March 2016 News Release

Under the agreement, CSIRO is assisting MecRx in validating its technology platform, which is being used to create promising starting points for new anti-cancer drugs. 

CSIRO shared the research and development costs in return for a mixture of milestone payments and shares in MecRx, based on their success. Today, CSIRO has a 14.6 per cent equity stake in the company.

The CSIRO risk-sharing agreement, combined with a Victorian government Innovation Voucher, enabled MecRx to secure the significant MRCF investment. 

“MecRx is a shining example of how the research and commercial sector can work together to accelerate Australian innovation and make a significant commercial impact,” MecRx board director Dr Chris Smith said.

“CSIRO and the Victorian government were crucial in getting our technology off the ground – without their funding support and expertise the idea would never have been tested and the huge potential our platform offers for new drug discovery would have gone unrealised.”

MecRx and CSIRO have now joined forces with the world-leading Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to develop and test a promising drug lead for inhibiting the biological target cMyc – a key driver of destructive cell mutation in many cancers.

If successful, the drug could be tested in cancer patients within a few years.

CSIRO’s chemistry group leader, Dr Jack Ryan, said an effective way to successfully inhibit cMyc has eluded scientists across the world for the past 30 years.

“We’re delighted to see this work translated to drug development, which we hope will ultimately lead to clinical trails through our partners at Peter Mac and commercialisation of the world’s first cMyc drug,” Dr Ryan said.

Peter Mac’s associate director for laboratory research, Professor Ricky Johnstone, is optimistic about the initial cMyc drug results.

“The drug lead directly targets cMyc, a protein which causes cancerous cells from a wide range of organs and tissues to divide uncontrollably,” Professor Johnstone said.

“If successful, the resulting medicine would have broad application in a large number of cancers.”

CSIRO works with around 100 biomedical companies each year to advance treatments and bring new world-class health technologies to market.

“Since its inception, CSIRO has created more than 150 companies and holds interests in about 30," Dr Ryan said.

"We’re also Australia’s largest patent portfolio and issues around 80 licenses each year, many to Australian businesses.”

Background information

About the medical research commercialisation fund (mrcf).

Established and managed by Brandon Capital Partners, the MRCF Collaboration brings together more than 50 of Australia’s leading medical research institutes and research hospitals, the Australian Government and the state governments of Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia.

The MRCF’s first two funds were supported by the superannuation funds, AustralianSuper and StatewideSuper, and the Australian Government through its Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) program.Continuing on the same model, the newest AU$200M MRCF3 fund is supported by AustralianSuper, StatewideSuper, HESTA and HOSTPLUS industry superannuation funds and managed by Brandon Capital Partners.

For more information visit: www.mrcf.com.au

About MecRx

MecRx is an early stage drug development company working on new treatments for cancer and novel mechanism of action antibiotics. Using proprietary ‘hit identification’ technology, MecRx is developing inhibitors of cMyc, a protein that is deregulated in over 50 per cent of all human cancers. MecRx draws on the expertise of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute and CSIRO and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia

For more information about MecRx visit: www.mecrx.com

Mutation and deregulation of the cMyc oncogene contributes to the formation and maintenance of many human cancers. Tumours with elevated levels of cMyc often exhibit highly proliferative, aggressive phenotypes and are often associated with resistance to primary treatments. Over 30 years of extensive study worldwide has convincingly shown that cMyc is a compelling target for therapeutic intervention. Despite considerable efforts, no drugs that effectively target cMyc have been developed as yet.

Find out how we can help you and your business. Get in touch using the form below and our experts will get in contact soon!

CSIRO will handle your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and our Privacy Policy .

Enter a valid email address, for example [email protected]

A Country value must be provided

First name must be filled in

Surname must be filled in

Please choose an option

Organisation must be filled in

Please provide a subject for the enquriy

We'll need to know what you want to contact us about so we can give you an answer

We have received your enquiry and will reply soon.

We're Sorry

The contact form is currently unavailable. Please try again later. If this problem persists, please call us with your enquiry on 1300 363 400 or +61 3 9545 2176. We are available from 9.00 am to 4.00 pm AEST Monday - Friday.

• Government Partners
• Investment Process
• Investments
• Brandon BioCatalyst Internship
• Queensland TACSGP
• Women in Leadership Development (WILD)
• About CUREator
• CUREator+ Dementia and Cognitive Decline

Australia’s first national biotech incubator established with $40m MRFF investment

, august 23, 2021 – australia’s first national biotech incubator established with $40m mrff investment.

Australia’s first national biotech incubator is to be established with $40m funding from the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and will be run by the Brandon Capital-managed Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF).

The Australian biotech incubator has been established to provide a critical bridge in the translation of promising research into revolutionary new therapies. The funding will be used to leverage Australia’s biotech research excellence to create a piece of national infrastructure that further supports life science researchers to commercialise their innovations.

“The Australian biotech incubator provides a game-changing prospect for more of our world class medical research to be commercialised. This expansion of risk capital and expertise is key to progressing many more of our lab discoveries into clinical studies and ultimately into life-saving new therapies globally,” says pioneer venture capitalist and Chair of the MRCF, Bill Ferris.

“Over the last decade we have seen a gradual increase in the availability of capital to support the development and translation of Australian biomedical discoveries.  However, the reality is that gaps, or even chasms, still remain. One of these is the capital required to bridge the gap between where research grant funding finishes, and before a technology is at a stage that it can attract its first seed investment,” says Dr Chris Nave, CEO and co-founder of the MRCF.

“This new incubator has been designed to directly address this problem and we believe it can make a real difference. The other significant gap, is the lack of capital for late-stage clinical development and commercialisation, but that is another problem that we are working toward solving”

The $40m funding will be used to develop two streams of activity over the next three years and any Australian SME, life science researcher at an Australian university or research institute, is eligible to apply for funding.

The first stream of $20m will identify promising preclinical biomedical technologies, providing funding and hands-on expertise to guide the development of these assets through to the point that they are ready for seed investment.

The second stream of $20m will provide capital to support the clinical development of novel therapies to treat disease. Opportunities that successfully receive funding through this stream, will also benefit from matching capital from the MRCF.

Together, both streams will result in at least a further $60m being invested into the biotech industry.

“The funding will see an increase in the translation of our greatest discoveries from the laboratory bench to the bedside,” continues Mr Ferris. “It will ensure Australians have access to the latest health treatments and will ultimately lead to more jobs, income, exports, infrastructure and manufacturing for the sector.”

Companies that successfully go through the incubator programme may also have access to follow on investment from the MRCF’s $700m life sciences fund, the largest in Australia and New Zealand.

“It is hugely competitive for small biotech companies looking to receive their first investment,” continues Dr Nave. “Up to 96 percent of applications seeking funding from the MRCF are declined due to being too early in development or lacking key supporting data. Yet many of these research discoveries have significant potential and this new incubator provides a mechanism for researchers to get their research innovations to a point where they are attractive to investors and partners.”

The incubator program aims to provide funding to 20-25 Australian SMEs developing preclinical biomedical assets during the three-year funding period, with individual projects eligible for up to $1,000,000 in funding. It will also provide up to $1.5m, matched with $1.5m from the MRCF, in funding to support 10-12 Australian SMEs in the development of their clinical stage products.

“We have world-class researchers in Australia who have the capabilities and infrastructure to advance and create therapies with the potential to have an enormous impact on some of the world’s largest health concerns,” says Dr Nave. “Overall, the incubator will create jobs, manufacturing opportunities and will nurture and develop world-class talent and research teams in the Australian biomedical industry.”

Mr Ferris was the architect behind the Federal Government’s $500m Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF) which was established in 2015 to create a source of VC dedicated to commercialisation of later stage biotech opportunities in Australia. It is unique in that it matches public with private capital, with the Brandon Capital MRCF BTF being the largest fund at $230m.

The BTF has been successful at developing a number of late-stage biotech companies in Australia. One of these is PolyActiva, a biotechnology company which has developed a biodegradable, slow-release ocular implant for treating glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness affecting 70 million people globally.

PolyActiva’s implant is aimed at providing six-months of therapy from a single injection, removing the need for up to four times daily drop therapy, that is often poorly applied and poorly adhered to by patients. It has received $30m in investment, including funding from the MRCF’s BTF, to complete Phase I & II clinical trials, with its world-leading product manufactured here in Australia.

Note to Editors:

For further information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Ciara Byrne, Mana Communications, [email protected] , +61 41 3519 430

Caleb Hulme-Moir, Mana Communications, [email protected] , +64 (0) 220 698 065

About the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) and Brandon Capital Partners

Brandon Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that manages the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), Australia and New Zealand’s largest life science investment fund, with more than $700 million under management. The MRCF is a unique collaboration between major Australian superannuation funds, the Australian and New Zealand governments, Australian state governments and more than 50 leading medical research institutes and research hospitals. The MRCF supports the development and commercialisation of early-stage biomedical discoveries associated with member research organisations, providing both capital and expertise to guide the successful development of new therapies. The MRCF has supported more than 50 start-up companies to date, most of which were founded by the MRCF.

For more information about the MRCF visit: https://biocatalyst.mrcfplatform.com/

For more information about Brandon Capital Partners visit: www.brandoncapital.com.au

About the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) is a research fund set up by the Australian Government in 2015. In July 2020, it grew to $20 billion. The net interest from the fund pays for important health and medical research projects.

For more information on the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) visit: https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/medical-research-future-fund/about-the-mrff

Brandon Biocatalyst is managed by Brandon Capital

Level 9, 31 Queen Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

Phone +61 3 9657 0700

Email: [email protected]

Suite 2.05, 1 York Street

Sydney NSW 2000

Phone +61 2 8227 7080

For media inquiries

Kirrily Davis

[email protected]

+61 401 220 228

©2024 BioCatalyst Copyright

Multi-million-dollar mission to tackle major global health challenges

SYDNEY, MARCH 10 – The George Institute for Global Health today announced that $53 million from three Australian investors will now support the commercialisation of its world-leading research to address some of the biggest health challenges of our time. The investments are set to fast-track the growth of George Health Enterprises , the Institute’s commercial arm, and George Medicines, its late-stage drug development company.

George Health Enterprises will receive $33 million from Federation Asset Management and Bupa to accelerate the development of an innovative drug and technology pipeline, born from The George Institute’s research program and already proven effective in managing some of the world’s most common and life-threatening chronic diseases.

George Medicines will receive $20 million from the Government-backed Medical Research Commercialisation Fund Biomedical Translation Fund (MRCF BTF), matched by George Health Enterprises, that will see a $40 million financial boost to the development and commercialisation of several pioneering drug treatments for heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

These conditions are amongst the nation’s biggest killers - an estimated one in two Australians have a chronic disease, and they are the leading cause of illness, disability and death. They also represent a rapidly emerging threat in underdeveloped countries, which has long been a focus of The George Institute’s research.

“In the twenty-first year since we established The Institute in Sydney, we’re excited to now embark on a new chapter of innovation and impact, taking our world-leading research - much of which has been supported by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council – and stepping up the commercial development of products targeting diseases that kill most people prematurely – not only in Australia but in most countries worldwide,” said Professor Stephen MacMahon, Co-Founder and Principal Director of The George Institute.

Staph Leavenworth Bakali, Chief Executive Officer and President of George Health Enterprises said: “We’re delighted that such a strong group of investors share our impact vision and are putting their money where it will make a difference to the health of millions of people, as well as delivering globally competitive financial returns.”

“George Medicines has a real and tantalising potential to revolutionise the ease of use, accessibility and affordability of medicines for cardiovascular and metabolic disease, in both the developed and developing worlds,” says Dr Ingmar Wahlqvist, Director at George Medicines and Senior Investment Manager at Brandon Capital.

The George Institute for Global Health has already seen almost a decade of business success since the establishment of George Clinical, a provider of clinical research services to the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries across Asia, Europe and the United States.

The Institute is ranked number one among Australian medical research institutes for impact and among the top fifty independent research institutes worldwide.

George Health Enterprises

Formed in 2014, George Health Enterprises (or George Health) is the commercial arm of The George Institute for Global Health. George Health is a for-profit fully-integrated global health care company committed to providing high-quality, affordable health products and services at scale. GH has exclusive commercial rights to all intellectual property of The George Institute, as well as access to expertise and support from its leading global scientists. The focus of George Health is on late stage clinical development of medicines and technologies for the most common serious chronic conditions.  GH has four established health impact-driven businesses – George Clinical, Ellen Medical Devices, George Health Technologies and George Medicines.

George Medicines

George Medicines is an innovative late-stage drug development company focused on the large, expanding and underserved market for the management of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). George Medicines is developing treatments designed to provide improved clinical outcomes among patients with cardiometabolic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, which remain the leading causes of premature death and disability worldwide. By combining established drugs in innovative fixed-dose formulations, George Medicines is creating treatments that are more efficacious, safer and affordable than the current alternatives.

The George Institute for Global Health

The George Institute for Global Health is an independent medical research institute aiming to improve the health of millions of people worldwide by generating effective, evidence-based and affordable solutions to the world’s biggest health challenges. Headquartered in Sydney, with major centres in China, India and the UK, it has projects in more than 50 countries and affiliations with world-class universities. In 2018, The George Institute was ranked the number-one independent research institute in Australia by Times Higher Education.

Bupa is a diverse health and care group which has been committed to a purpose of longer, healthier, happier lives for close to 70 years.  In Australia and New Zealand, Bupa supports more than 6 million customers through a broad range of health and care services including health insurance, aged care, rehabilitation, dental, optical, medical, hearing and medical visa services.

Employing more than 22,000 people, we believe that we can make a real difference to the lives of Australians and New Zealanders through our values, purpose and the way that we deliver personalised care.

Federation Asset Management

Federation is a leading investor in sustainable infrastructure and renewable energy, health and education real estate, and operating companies with strong growth potential. Its mission is to produce clean energy, to improve the health, education and living conditions of future generations, and to build a better community. Federation builds strong, sustainable, market-leading businesses through the provision of the capital they need to grow, as well as the strategic, analytical and operational support brought from years supporting similar businesses. The team has a strong track record of working together over a number of years and offers unrivalled investment experience across these sectors. Federation is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing and is a member of the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia.

About the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) and Brandon Capital Partners

Brandon Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that manages the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), Australia and New Zealand’s largest life science investment fund. The MRCF is a unique collaboration between major Australian superannuation funds, the Australian and New Zealand governments, Australian state governments and more than 50 leading medical research institutes and research hospitals. The MRCF supports the development and commercialisation of early-stage biomedical discoveries originating from member research organisations, providing both capital and expertise to guide the successful development of new therapies. The MRCF has supported more than 45 start-up companies to date, most of which were founded by the MRCF. For more information about Brandon Capital Partners, visit www.brandoncapital.com.au

About the Biomedical Translation Fund

The Biomedical Translation Fund was announced by the federal government in December 2015 as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda. It is a for-profit venture capital fund which pools public and private capital ($250 million of Commonwealth funding to be matched with private sector capital, creating $500 million for investment) for investments in companies with medical research projects at advanced pre-clinical, Phase I and Phase II stages of development.

Brandon Capital was one of three venture capital firms appointed as fund managers.

Professor Stephen MacMahon AO

Professor Robyn Norton AO

Related people

David armstrong.

Gina Anderson

Further reading

New funding to ensure australia’s health innovators are redi for business.

The George Institute announces 'game changing' investment

The George Institute receives over $8 million to fight our biggest health burdens

George Institute receives $10 million in research grants.

New Board members strengthen philanthropy and business agendas for The George institute for Global Health

Media contacts

Rachel harris.

Media and Communications Manager

[email protected]

Biotechdispatch – BTF backs creation of Certa Therapeutics

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) and Uniseed have announced a $25 million investment in Certa Therapeutics.

The investment is comprised of $22 million from the federal government’s Biotechnology Translation Fund (BTF), the single largest investment by the fund, and $3 million from Uniseed. Certa is initially targeting kidney disease, where scarring leads to kidney failure and ultimately dialysis or kidney transplantation.

Certa said its novel drugs block a receptor that is a key driver of this fibrosis. It said it is able to use genetic analysis to identify those patients that are most likely to benefit from the therapy. There are currently no treatments available for kidney fibrosis. Kidney disease is a major killer and a significant cost to the Australian economy. Approximately 53 Australians die each day from kidney-related diseases.

The CEO and founder of Certa Therapeutics is Professor Darren Kelly. He says the company’s fibrosis treatment could be on the market within five years. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be working in medical science. The amount of stored genetic material at our fingertips is immense. Access to this genetic data is transforming how we treat diseases. Rather than creating drugs that work for majority of the population, we can now tailor our treatment based on an understanding of genetic make-up. The implications of this for fighting disease are profound.”

MRCF and Uniseed acquired clinical development candidates from Shire to support the creation of Certa. In exchange, Shire has an 18 percent equity stake in the company and is eligible to receive royalties on future global product sales.

The $500 million Biomedical Translation Fund was created by the federal government in 2016. Brandon Capital has been appointed to manage the largest pool of funds, worth $230 million. “The scale of this investment has been made possible by the Biotechnology Translation Fund,” said Dr Chris Nave, CEO of the MRCF and managing director of Brandon Capital. “In many ways this investment represents the raison detre of the BTF, taking great Australian medical science and providing it with access to sufficient capital to enable its continued, late stage, clinical development in Australia. The BTF was designed to be transformative for our local industry, providing the ability for research discoveries to be developed from concept to commercialisation right here in Australia, creating jobs and growing a sustainable industry along the way.”

“Certa’s technology is at the forefront of efforts to treat kidney disease and provides another great example of the world leading biotechnology research being conducted in Australia,” said Dr John Kurek, investment manager at Uniseed.

Certa Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on improving lives by developing innovative precision treatments for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases

a: Level 9, 31 Queen Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

e: [email protected]

QUICK LINKS

Science Pipeline News Contact

Certa Therapeutics © 2022

Privacy Policy | ABN 22 622 894 320

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• CAREER FEATURE
• 24 May 2024

What steps to take when funding starts to run out

• Neil Savage 0

Neil Savage is a science and technology journalist in Lowell, Massachusetts.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Bridge-funding programmes can provide researchers with enough money to sustain their work until they have secured a bigger grant. Credit: Getty

Zhen Jiang had spent several years studying molecules that regulate insulin signalling and glucose transport, and his results were urging him in a new research direction, focused on inflammation in obesity and how it relates to tissue damage. After five years, his first grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) was running out, so he applied for new funds to follow the leads he’d uncovered.

But reviewers scored his grant application too low to qualify for funding, and suddenly Jiang, a biochemist at Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine in Massachusetts, found himself without the funds he needed to keep his laboratory, of three people, running. “We depend on grant support, and if you don’t have money, a school can let you go.” A stressful situation to be in, he says.

Trying to work out what to do, he turned to the programme officer at the NIH. The officer noted that his score was close to being accepted, and suggested he apply for an NIH bridge grant, which would give him US$350,000, allowing him to gather more data and strengthen his next, larger, grant application. He also received some funding from his university, which he says was crucial to keep the lab going. After 6 months of accumulating data, he reapplied to the NIH and won a 3-year grant of about $415,000 per year to study inflammation in liver tissue, then a second 4-year grant for more than $500,000 per year to apply his work to the heart.

NIH pay rise for postdocs and PhD students could have US ripple effect

“This kind of bridge fund is so necessary for a lab,” Jiang says, even though the amount was tens of thousands of dollars less than one year’s worth of standard funding, which can be around $500,000 per year. It does mean, however, that researchers need to make sacrifices. “You have to cut your cost,” he says. “That’s the only way to do it.” He was forced to lay off one member of his lab and take on more of the work himself.

Jiang, who had worked as a physician in Jiangxi, China, before switching to research, knew that he’d have to fight for funding in this line of work. “This is always a competitive field. The money’s always not enough,” he says. “You have to work very hard in order to find something new and convince your funder into supporting you. It’s a tough business.”

Ahead of the game

The problem of maintaining enough support to keep lines of research going is a continuing one for academics, with the major government funding bodies regularly awarding money to only one-quarter — or less — of the proposals that they receive. The funding gaps lead to stress for researchers, who might have to curtail a line of enquiry, lay off support staff or postdocs and even potentially lose their position.

Statistics show that the problem hasn’t changed much in years, although budgets might now be spread thinner. Over the past two decades, the percentage of successful applications for NIH research grants has hovered at around 20% (see go.nature.com/4bghwbi ). Although the gross amount of those grants has increased, the NIH’s spending power has remained relatively constant; the average NIH grant size was $247,000 in 1998 and in 2022, it was $288,000 in 1998 dollars (see go.nature.com/3uh4mup ). And although the funding has stayed the same, the money has to go further, because the NIH approved an 8% pay raise for postdoctoral researchers earlier this year.

The NIH, which is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, gave out just shy of 59,000 awards in 2023, a total of $34.9 billion.

Around only one-quarter of grant proposals that are submitted to major funding bodies are successful. Credit: Adapted from Getty

The US National Science Foundation (NSF), meanwhile, handed out more than 11,000 awards in the 2020–21 fiscal year, the latest year for which statistics are available. Applicants had a success rate of 26%. The situation in the United Kingdom is similar; the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding agency gave out £3.1 billion (US$3.9 billion) in the 2022–23 fiscal year, with a success rate of 27%.

The success rate for Horizon Europe, a European Union funding scheme with €95.5 billion (US$103.6 billion) to give out between 2021 and 2027, is even lower. As of 2022, applicants had a success rate of 16% for 5,509 grants, up from 12% in the final year of Horizon 2020 (the EU’s previous funding scheme that ran from 2014 to 2020). The European Commission says that 71% of high-quality proposals don’t get funded (see go.nature.com/3yuzhp4 ). Germany is the leading European country in research expenditures, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) had around €3.9 billion to work with in 2022. It funded 26.5% of applications, including humanities and social sciences.

Boom and bust

Post-pandemic spikes in inflation have caused researchers to run out of grant money quickly, especially in the United Kingdom, where prices have soared much more rapidly than in the United States. Researchers estimate their costs when applying for a grant, says Bryony Butland, a former programme director at UKRI and now director of research and innovation at Queen Mary University of London, but thanks to inflation, those estimates don’t hold over four or five years of funding. “You’re in the middle of spending it, and suddenly you find that goods prices, things that you want to do, consumables have all gone up,” she says.

The uncertainty in funding can be hard on researchers, says Stuart Buck, a lawyer based in Houston, Texas. Buck runs the Good Science Project, which is searching for more sustainable ways to fund research. He says he spoke to a principal investigator with several postdoctoral students at a leading university, who told him that because of the 20% success rate, he applies for multiple grants at one time. One year the researcher applied for ten five-year grants, and not one was funded, Buck says. The next year, three applications that he resubmitted were successful.

US postdocs on strike: how will demands for higher wages be met?

Aside from the stress that this kind of boom-and-bust cycle creates for researchers, Buck says, it also introduces uncertainty. “It’s hard to have long-term planning for who to offer multi-year positions to when you’re not sure whether your funding might double one year because you got two grants, or it might be cut in half one year because you lost one of your grants.” And time spent submitting proposals is time not spent doing research. “We want people who are trained scientists to be able to focus on science and not just worry about having to hustle for money,” Buck says.

Toll on trainees

The loss of grants can also take a toll on trainee researchers’ careers. Wei Yang Tham, an economist at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues compared data from a group of NIH grants with data from the US census and tax records to look at what effect lapses in funding had on people working in labs with a single grant (see go.nature.com/4br9fli ). After a grant ran out, personnel in these labs were 40% more likely than others to disappear from the tax records, he found, meaning that they probably became unemployed. A lot of those people, many of whom had gone to the United States to study, end up leaving the country, Tham says. The largest effects are not on the faculty members, but on postdocs, graduate students and non-research staff such as project managers. Those who do stay, Tham and his colleagues found, earn on average 20% less five years later than do their continuously funded peers.

Bridging the gap

To avoid such problems, many institutions have programmes that provide labs with bridge funding, which can be used to tide over labs for a relatively short period of time while a larger package of money is sought from a research funder. A portion of research grants are intended to pay for the indirect costs of an academic lab, including fees for building maintenance, student services and utilities, which are distributed among the academic department, the school it’s in or the university as a whole. University administrators might be able to use some of that funding to provide a cushion for researchers whose money runs low.

Bridge-funding programmes are important both to make sure that a university can treat its employees well and to ensure the continuity of the science, says Deborah Thomas, a geographer and interim associate vice-chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Labs would prefer not to lose their graduate students, postdocs and research scientists, and then have to look for new staff members when funding is restored. “If you have to let that person go, then you have to rehire, there’s a lot of time involved in that. Plus, you lose knowledge,” she says.

Allan Jacobson, a molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, agrees. “We’ve put so much into these people and see them as assets,” he says. “Just because they have a bit of a funding problem doesn’t mean you should let them sink. It’s in the department’s interest to keep everybody happy and functional.”

Jacobson, who spent 30 years as chair of the department of microbiology and physiological systems at the Chan Medical School, negotiated funding from the school to develop what he called a rejuvenation programme. If faculty members were struggling to get grants, he would offer them multi-year in-house ‘sabbaticals’, with funding for supplies and technical help, to work with another researcher at the medical school and learn something new that could bolster their own research.

Jacobson says there can be other creative ways to drum up research support. That includes considering whether research that is struggling to get funding might have some commercial potential, and if so turning to the university’s commercialization office, which can sometimes provide “fairly sizeable grants”, he says. That can then be used for the translation of that research into a product. For instance, one researcher in his department whose funding was on the edge had done work which showed promise as a treatment for an eye disease. The department helped him to team up with a researcher in ophthalmology to develop a mouse model for the study, and the commercialization department helped to license the technology.

How philanthropy can nurture your research

Funding policies and support structures differ across countries. For example, some researchers at German universities have access to bridge funding. Postdocs whose positions are expiring can apply for funding from the DFG to set up their own groups, through the Emmy Noether Programme. At the University of Potsdam in Germany, applicants to the programme who are waiting for a decision and whose applications look promising can receive up to six months of bridge funds, says Barbara Höhle, a linguist and vice-president for research at the university.

Tenured and tenure-track faculty members in Germany, by contrast, don’t have to look to funding agencies to pay their salaries. They have salaries and a budget guaranteed by the universities, which are publicly funded, and agency funding goes towards the implicit cost of hiring researchers. “It’s more the employees in the projects that can be affected by these gaps,” Höhle says. The downside for aspiring researchers, she says, is that universities don’t have much room to increase the number of faculty members.

Planning helps

Researchers can keep their projects going when their laboratory income drops by planning ahead, Jacobson says. It’s a good idea to apply for several grants with different expiration dates, so that money doesn’t run completely dry. And careful budgeting can allow faculty members to save some of their grant in a rainy-day fund; the NIH allows one-time ‘no-cost extensions’ using unspent funds to complete or phase out a project for up to 12 months. Jacobson has twice had a grant expire with no replacement, and was able to survive for a few months until the next grant came along thanks to both of these strategies, he says. “It’s easy to lose funding,” he says. “Most divisions of the NIH are funding 10–12% of approvable grants. It’s a rough world out there.”

The University of Houston in Texas holds grant-writing workshops for its faculty members, says Claudia Neuhauser, a mathematician and the university’s interim vice-chancellor for research. For those who might be funded by, for example, the NIH, but whose research might also appeal to the grants office at the US Department of Defense, the university introduces them to proposal-writing companies that can provide researchers with insights on how to tailor their grant applications for each agency. “Helping somebody make that transition so they can expand the types of grants they can apply for, that’s obviously important,” she says. The university also provides bridge funding of up to $100,000 that faculty members can apply for if their proposal has received a high enough score from the funding agency, which means there’s a good chance it could win funding after a revision.

“We do push team science at the moment quite strongly because there are many more opportunities where you can apply as a team,” Neuhauser says. Collaborating with other scientists can lead to larger grants that are funded for longer and that often include funding for shared equipment.

Some researchers might think that they can improve their odds of success by making the costs in their proposals as low as possible. Butland cautions against this. Not only might the researchers run out of money sooner that way, but they’re also misleading funding agencies about the true costs of research. “We need to try and not underprice ourselves, which then just feeds that underfunding of the system as well,” she says.

New funding opportunities

There is new hope for UK researchers. After being cut out of the EU’s Horizon Europe funding programme by Brexit, the country rejoined it in January this year. Therefore, UK scientists can once again apply to it and to Copernicus, a component of the EU’s space programme.

Butland worries about the effects of the low success rates. “You can be spending a lot of time putting in a research application and actually never winning anything,” she says. “There is a point at which running a full competitive process doesn’t make any sense. It’s a lot of bureaucracy and burden on people.”

But competitive funding is a fact of life in science, she concedes. So researchers whose grants are nearing an end should try to expand their horizons when it comes to looking for funding sources, Butland says. UK researchers shouldn’t just stick with the research council they’re used to, and scientists in the United states can look to other NIH institutes and even other funding agencies. “Maybe another part of the funding landscape actually would find your work really interesting,” she says. “You just need to think about it a little bit differently, speak a slightly different language, but relate to their challenges and opportunities in a way that maybe you haven’t thought about before.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01570-y

Related Articles

How researchers in remote regions handle the isolation

Career Feature 24 MAY 24

Brazil’s plummeting graduate enrolments hint at declining interest in academic science careers

Career News 21 MAY 24

How religious scientists balance work and faith

Career Feature 20 MAY 24

US halts funding to controversial virus-hunting group: what researchers think

News 16 MAY 24

A DARPA-like agency could boost EU innovation — but cannot come at the expense of existing schemes

Editorial 14 MAY 24

Lack of effective intercultural communication is hobbling academia — fix it for research equity

Correspondence 21 MAY 24

Harassment of scientists is surging — institutions aren’t sure how to help

News Feature 21 MAY 24

How to set up your new lab space

Career Column 20 MAY 24

Professor, Division Director, Translational and Clinical Pharmacology

Cincinnati Children’s seeks a director of the Division of Translational and Clinical Pharmacology.

Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati Children's Hospital & Medical Center

Data Analyst for Gene Regulation as an Academic Functional Specialist

The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn is an international research university with a broad spectrum of subjects. With 200 years of his...

53113, Bonn (DE)

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität

Recruitment of Global Talent at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOZ, CAS)

The Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is seeking global talents around the world.

Beijing, China

Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOZ, CAS)

Full Professorship (W3) in “Organic Environmental Geochemistry (f/m/d)

The Institute of Earth Sciences within the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University invites applications for a   FULL PROFE...

Heidelberg, Brandenburg (DE)

Universität Heidelberg

Postdoc: deep learning for super-resolution microscopy

The Ries lab is looking for a PostDoc with background in machine learning.

Vienna, Austria

University of Vienna

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Fostering translational clinical research via industry partnership

22 May 2024

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has partnered with AstraZeneca to provide six MRC clinical fellows with one-year industry placement opportunities.

Partnering with academic clinicians is essential for any clinical trial research, and helps ensure that trials translate into current clinical practice and remain focused on the needs of patients.

However, in the UK, the number of academic clinicians within the health system is predicted to decline. This trend could make future clinical research more challenging.

As part of our commitment to fostering translational clinical research in the UK, MRC is partnering with the AstraZeneca on one-year industry placement opportunities within their BioPharmaceuticals Research and Development (R&D) business.

Strengthening ability to lead translational clinical trials

The aim of this scheme is to provide clinically active healthcare professionals currently funded by MRC the opportunity to embed within a major pharmaceutical company. This opportunity will help them build their experience of the regulatory and clinical processes involved in developing new medicines, therefore strengthening their ability to lead translational clinical trials in the future.

The partnership supports career development by fostering skills and knowledge in good clinical practice, equipping individuals to lead translational clinical trials in either an academic or industry environment.

This will provide long-term benefits to the UK clinical trials and research landscape and support the development of new medicines.

Supporting development of future therapeutics

Dr David Pan, Head of Programme, Training and Careers at MRC said:

This new partnership with AstraZeneca provides an exciting opportunity for MRC clinical fellows to gain knowledge and experience of the regulatory and clinical trial process involved in the development of new therapies. Overall, it will provide a closer link between clinical academic research and the commercialisation of discoveries to provide long term benefits for both sectors and help to support the development of future therapeutics.

Building towards research leadership

Jacqueline Hall, Head of Early Careers, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said:

This is an exciting opportunity to strengthen the future talent pool and wider scientific skills environment in the UK. This partnership brings new experiences and perspectives into AstraZeneca and enables the fellows to deploy new skills and build towards their research leadership. Strengthening the connections between industry and the UK research community has enormous mutual benefits for academia, industry, the health system and ultimately, patients.

Bringing fresh and innovative talent

David Howe, Head of Clinical Development, Neuroscience, said:

We are committed to strengthening STEM skills in the UK, and this new partnership with the MRC represents an important part of our wider approach to early careers. We hope to bring fresh and innovative talent into the organisation and strengthen translational research capabilities both within AstraZeneca and beyond.

Read more about the fellows on the AstraZeneca website .

More clinical academic industry partnerships

The MRC is further boosting clinical academic careers and equipping researchers to move between sectors with a new MRC Medicines Development Fellowship programme. It will strengthen interactions between academia and industry to deliver world-class medicines development by supporting four predoctoral fellows and the development of four new, five-year clinician scientist fellowships.

The programme is led by the University of Liverpool in partnership with Queen Mary University London, University of Glasgow, The University of Manchester.

It is co-funded and supported by two major pharmaceutical companies, GSK and AstraZeneca, in addition to a data science company, Optum UK, and Hammersmith Medicines Research, the UK’s largest clinical research organisation.

Read more about it on the University of Liverpool website .

Top image:  Credit: Totojang, iStock, Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

Share this page

• Share this page on Twitter
• Share this page on LinkedIn
• Share this page on Facebook

This is the website for UKRI: our seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Let us know if you have feedback or would like to help improve our online products and services .

• Azerbaijani
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Haitian Creole
• Kinyarwanda
• Kurdish (Kurmanji)
• Kurdish (Soranî)
• Odia (Oriya)
• Scots Gaelic

$25 million booster shot for WA's health and medical research sector

• First round of new Research Infrastructure Support program awarded
• $25 million to support health and medical research ecosystem and build collaboration
• 19 local organisations to benefit across the sector

The Cook Government will inject $25 million into Western Australia's health and medical research sector towards boosting operational and indirect research costs.

Under a new scheme being launched through the Government's successful Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund, the Research Infrastructure Support (RIS) program will deliver $100 million into the sector over four years.

The RIS program supports research institutes, universities and hospitals by providing grants to cover indirect and operational costs associated with the running of their research facilities.

This investment will also expand access and availability of existing dedicated research facilities, services and/or equipment.

These new grants will enable local organisations to boost capacity and free up funds so they can push on with their important cutting-edge and world-class research.

The 19 recipients of this year's $25 million RIS grants include:

• Child and Adolescent Health Service
• Curtin University
• Ear Science Institute Australia
• East Metropolitan Health Service
• Edith Cowan University
• Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research
• Institute for Respiratory Health
• Joondalup Health Campus
• Lions Eye Institute
• Murdoch University
• North Metropolitan Health Service
• Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science
• South Metropolitan Health Service
• Telethon Kids Institute
• The University of Notre Dame Australia
• The University of Western Australia
• WA Country Health Service
• Women and Infants Research Foundation

To learn more about the RIS program, visit Future Health Research and Innovation Fund - News and Events

Comments attributed to Medical Research Minister Stephen Dawson: 

"We are extremely fortunate to have a pool of amazing and very talented health and medical researchers based here, whose work is positioning WA as a global leader in research and innovation.

"The RIS program is another important step in maintaining this momentum and I am very pleased to announce that 19 health and medical research organisations will share in $25 million in funding through the first round.

"We've expanded on the previous program as part of the Cook Government's FHRI Fund to include universities and hospitals to ensure they are also receiving support to assist with indirect research costs.

"The RIS program is all about backing our home-grown research teams so they can crack on with translating their innovative research into practice and commercialisation, leading to improved health outcomes and local jobs for the WA community."

Hon. Stephen Dawson

Acknowledgement of country.

The Government of Western Australia acknowledges the traditional custodians throughout Western Australia and their continuing connection to the land, waters and community. We pay our respects to all members of the Aboriginal communities and their cultures; and to Elders both past and present.

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

MIT scholars will take commercial break with entrepreneurial scholarship

Press contact :.

Previous image Next image

Two MIT scholars, each with a strong entrepreneurial drive, have received 2024 Kavanaugh Fellowship awards, advancing their quest to turn pioneering research into profitable commercial enterprises.

The Kavanaugh Translational Fellows Program gives scholars training to lead organizations that will bring their research to market. PhD candidates Grant Knappe and Arjav Shah are this year’s recipients. Knappe is developing a drug delivery platform for an emerging class of medicines called nucleic acid therapeutics. Shah is using hydrogel microparticles to clean up water polluted by heavy metals and other contaminants. Knappe and Shah will begin their fellowship with years of entrepreneurial expertise under their belts. They’ve developed and refined their business plans through MIT’s innovation ecosystem, including the Sandbox, the Legatum Center, the Venture Mentoring Service, the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps Program, and Blueprint by The Engine. Now, the yearlong Kavanaugh Fellowship will give the scholars time to focus exclusively on testing their business plans and exercising decision-making skills — critical to startup success — with the guidance of MIT mentors.

“It’s a testament to the support and direction they’ve received from the MIT community that their entrepreneurial aspirations have evolved and matured over time,” says Michael J. Cima, program director for the Kavanaugh program and the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Founded in 2016, the Kavanaugh program was instrumental in helping past fellows launch several robust startups, including low-carbon cement manufacturer Sublime Systems and SiTration, which is using a new type of filtration membrane to extract critical materials such as lithium.

A safer way to deliver breakthrough medicines

Nucleic acid therapeutics, including mRNA and CRISPR, are disrupting today’s clinical landscape thanks to their promise of targeting disease treatment according to genetic blueprints. But the first methods of delivering these molecules to the body used viruses as their transport, raising patient safety concerns .

“Humans have figured out how to engineer certain viruses found in nature to deliver specific cargoes [for disease treatment],” says Knappe. “But because they look like viruses, the human immune system sees them as a danger signal and creates an immune reaction that can be harmful to patients.”

Given the safety profile issues of viral delivery, researchers turned to non-viral technologies that use lipid nanoparticle technology, a mixture of different lipid-like materials, assembled into particles to protect the mRNA therapeutic from getting degraded before it reaches a cell of interest. “Because they don’t look like viruses there, the immune system generally tolerates them,” adds Knappe.

Recent data show lipid nanoparticles can now target the lung, opening the potential for novel treatments of deadly cancers and other diseases.

Knappe’s work in MIT’s Bathe BioNanoLab focused on building such a non-viral delivery platform based on a different technology: nucleic acid nanoparticles, which combine the attractive components of both viral and non-viral systems. Knappe will spend his Kavanaugh Fellowship year developing proof-of-concept data for his drug delivery method and building the team and funding needed to commercialize the technology.

A PhD candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE), Knappe was initially attracted to MIT because of its intellectual openness. “You can work with any faculty member in other departments. I wasn't restricted to the chemical engineering faculty,” says Knappe, whose supervisor, Professor Mark Bathe, is in the Department of Biological Engineering.

Knappe, who is from New Jersey, welcomes the challenges that will come in his Kavanaugh year, including the need to pinpoint the right story that will convince venture capitalists and other funders to bet on his technology. Attracting talent is also top of mind. “How do you convince really talented people that have a lot of opportunities to work on what you work on? Building the first team is going to be critical,” he says. The network Knappe has been building in his years at MIT is paying dividends now.

Targeting “forever chemicals” in water

That network includes Shah. The two fellows met when they worked on the MIT Science Policy Review , a student-run journal concerned with the intersection of science, technology, and policy. Knappe and Shah did not compete directly academically but used their biweekly coffee walks as a welcome sounding board. Naturally, they were pleased when they found out they had both been chosen for the Kavanaugh Fellowship. So far, they have been too busy to celebrate over a beer.

“We are good collaborators with research, as well,” says Shah. “Now we’re going on this entrepreneurial journey together. It’s been exciting.”

Shah is a PhD candidate in ChemE’s Chemical Engineering Practice program. He got interested in the global imperative for cleaner water at a young age. His hometown of Surat is the heart of India’s textile industry. “Growing up, it wasn’t hard to see the dye-colored water flowing into your rivers and streams,” Shah says. “Playing a role in fostering positive change in water treatment fills me with a profound sense of purpose.”

Shah’s work, broadly, is to clean toxic chemicals called micropollutants from water in an efficient and sustainable manner. “It’s humanly impossible to turn a blind eye to our water problems,” he says, which can be categorized as accessibility, availability, and quality. Water problems are global and complex, not just because of the technological challenges but also sociopolitical ones, he adds.

Manufactured chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “forever chemicals,” are in the news these days. PFAS, which go into making nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing, are just one of more than 10,000 such emerging contaminants that have leached into water streams. “These are extremely difficult to remove using existing systems because of their chemical diversity and low concentrations,” Shah says. “The concentrations are akin to dropping an aspirin tablet in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.” But no less toxic for that.

In the lab at MIT, Shah is working with Devashish Gokhale, a fellow PhD student, and Patrick S. Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering, to commercialize an innovative microparticle technology , hydroGel, to remove these micropollutants in an effective, facile, and sustainable manner. Hydrogels are a broad class of polymer materials that can hold large quantities of water.

“Our materials are like Boba beads. We are trying to save the world with our Boba beads,” says Shah with a laugh. “And we have functionalized these particles with tunable chemistries to target different micropollutants in a single unit operation.”

Due to its outsized environmental impact, industrial water is the first application Shah is targeting. Today, wastewater treatment emits more than 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions , which is more than the shipping industry’s emissions, for example. The current state of the art for removing micropollutants in the industry is to use activated carbon filters. “[This technology] comes from coal, so it’s unsustainable,” Shah says. And the activated carbon filters are hard to reuse. “Our particles are reusable, theoretically infinitely.”

“I’m very excited to be able to take advantage of the mentorship we have from the Kavanaugh team to take this technology to its next inflection point, so that we are ready to go out in the market and start making a huge impact,” he says.

A dream community

Shah and Knappe have become adept at navigating the array of support and mentorship opportunities MIT has to offer. Shah worked with a small team of seasoned professionals in the water space from the MIT Venture Mentoring Service. “They’ve helped us every step of the way as we think about commercializing the technology,” he says.

Shah worked with MIT Sandbox, which provides a seed grant to help find the right product-market fit. He is also a fellow with the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship , which focuses on entrepreneurship in global growth markets.

“We’re exploring the potential for this technology and its application in a lot of different markets, including India. Because that’s close to my heart,” Shah says. “The Legatum community has been unique, where you can have those extremely hard conversations, confront yourself with those fears, and then talk it out with the group of fellows.”

The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, or J-WAFS, has been an integral part of Shah’s journey with research and commercialization support through its Solutions Grant and a travel award to the Stockholm World Water Week in August 2023.

Knappe has also taken advantage of many innovation programs, including MIT’s Blueprint by the Engine, which helps researchers explore commercial opportunities of their work, plus programs outside of MIT but with strong on-campus ties such as Nucleate Activator and Frequency Bio.

It was during one of these programs that he was inspired by two postdocs working in Bathe’s lab and spinning out biotech startups from their research, Floris Engelhardt and James Banal. Engelhardt helped spearhead Kano Therapeutics , and Banal launched Cache DNA .

“I was passively absorbing and watching everything that they were going through and what they were excited about and challenged with. I still talk to them pretty regularly to this day,” Knappe says. “It’s been really great to have them as continual mentors, throughout my PhD and as I transition out of the lab.”

Shah says he is grateful not only for being selected for the Kavanaugh Fellowship but to MIT as a community. “MIT has been more than a dream come true,” he says. He will have the opportunity to explore a different side of the institution as he enters the MBA program at MIT Sloan School of Management this fall. Shah expects this program, along with his Kavanaugh training, will supply the skills he needs to scale the business so it can make a difference in the world.

“I always keep coming back to the question ‘How does what I do matter to the person on the street?’ This guides me to look at the bigger picture, to contextualize my research to solving important problems,” Shah says. “So many great technologies are being worked on each day, but only a minuscule fraction make it to the market.”

Knappe is equally dedicated to serving a larger purpose. “With the right infrastructure, between basic fundamental science, conducted in academia, funded by government, and then translated by companies, we can make products that could improve everyone’s life across the world,” he says.

Past Kavanaugh Fellows are credited with spearheading commercial outfits that have indeed made a difference. This year’s fellows are poised to follow their lead. But first they will have that beer together to celebrate.

Share this news article on:

Related links.

• Kavanaugh Fellowship
• Michael Cima
• Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Related Topics

• Awards, honors and fellowships
• Graduate, postdoctoral
• Biological engineering
• Chemical engineering
• Venture Mentoring Service
• Health sciences and technology
• Bioengineering and biotechnology
• Drug delivery
• Environment
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E)
• MIT Sloan School of Management

Related Articles

Q&A: A blueprint for sustainable innovation

A new way to swiftly eliminate micropollutants from water

A passion for innovation and education

New approach suggests path to emissions-free cement

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

Understanding why autism symptoms sometimes improve amid fever

Read full story →

School of Engineering welcomes new faculty

Study explains why the brain can robustly recognize images, even without color

Turning up the heat on next-generation semiconductors

Sarah Millholland receives 2024 Vera Rubin Early Career Award

A community collaboration for progress

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

9 Student Teams Recipients of Spring 2024 Orange Innovation Fund Awards

Natasha Brao (left), Emeka Ossai (center) and Xheneta Sopjani are among the recipients of the Spring 2024 Orange Innovation Fund grant.

Nine student teams will each receive $5,000 through the Orange Innovation Fund , a grant program administered through Syracuse University Libraries designed to help students commercialize their research ideas.

This semester’s recipients, who will be honored during a Zoom event on May 23, are:

• Emeka Ossai G’25 ( Martin J. Whitman School of Management ), founder of Campus Labs, a pilot program launching this summer for ten startup labs in the CampusLabs Nigeria incubator for young entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
• Xheneta Sopjani G’24 (Whitman School), Fulbright Scholar, founder of Revive by Deinde, to fabricate five units for testing a device that helps with cell rejuvenation and scientifically proven skincare.
• Waqar Hussain G’25 (Whitman School), Fulbright Scholar, founder of Iconnic.Cloud, a managed cloud service platform providing digital products, web applications and software for small businesses.
• Brielle Young ’27 ( School of Information Studies and Whitman School), Leadership Scholar and Renee Crown Honors Program, founder of Aggregate, an agritech company connecting communities of producers and consumers via a digital platform and e-commerce search engine.
• Natasha Brao ’22 ( College of Visual and Performing Arts ) G’23 and G’24 (Whitman School), founder of Root & Seed Brands and Shooka Sauce, for production of a second flavor of her successful Mediterranean spiced tomato sauce gaining popularity among US restaurants and food bloggers.
• Max Sulik G’24 ( College of Engineering and Computer Science ), Syracuse University Ambulance emergency medical technician, founder of Vital Air Quality Sensor, a portable sensor that delivers real-time data regarding current temperature, humidity, particulate matter and CO levels to users.
• Ashtha Singh G’24 ( Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs ), Chancellor’s Citation of Excellence recipient, Downey Scholar and vice president of Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity, founder of Step Ahead Tech, a nonprofit organization that bridges the gap in STEM education, including robotic workshops, for underserved and underrepresented students in four locations in her home community.
• Angelo Niforatos G’20 (Engineering and Computer Science), G’24 (Whitman School), founder of Niffy Drone Solutions, a drone developer and fabricator specializing in military and defense and smart home/building repair detection and analysis.
• Cory Mitchell G’24 (Whitman School), veteran, co-founder of EntreVita, a food tech startup focused on evidence-based human-centered technology for precision health using artificial intelligence.

Funding for the Orange Innovation Award program comes from a gift from Raj-Ann Rekhi Gill ’98, a member of the Syracuse University Board of Trustees who is an operating partner of Silicon Valley Quad, an angel investing syndicate.

“The list of this year’s recipients of the award is truly inspiring and a testament to the burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem, which is nurtured by SU Libraries, Blackstone LaunchPad and campus partners,” Rekhi Gill says.

“I am honored to have won an Orange Innovation award,” says Sopjani.” This will certainly be a pivotal moment for Revive by Deinde, enabling us to establish a strong foundation and turn this vision into reality.”

“I am thrilled to pursue the opportunities that the Orange Innovation Fund will allow us. Step Ahead Tech is dedicated to bridging the educational and digital divide, and the robotics program we will be launching brings us one step closer,” says Singh.

“Aggregate empowers producers to share their goods, whether they are artisanal crafts or farm-fresh produce. Funding will support the development of a viable product, working with farmers and small businesses to meet their needs. I am grateful for the support of the Orange Innovation Fund award which will continue to advance our goal of fostering vibrant agriculture communities,” says Young.

“The Orange Innovation Fund takes a major restraint off the development of Vital Air Quality Sensor, while providing an opportunity to expand in new directions,” says Sulik. “The award is immensely valued and appreciated.”

Demonstrating a wide range of student diversity and backgrounds, four of the ventures are led by women founders, five are led by founders of color and one is led by a combat veteran.

The Orange Innovation Fund supports student research initiatives emerging from campus innovation programs. It is intended to help move graduate and undergraduate student research or scholarly projects from ideation to proof of concept and commercialization, supporting the University’s goals of excellence in research, scholarship, student experiential learning and innovation.

“The call for spring proposals received an unprecedented high number of proposals,” says Linda Dickerson-Hartsock, advisor for strategic initiatives at Syracuse University Libraries. “The proposals from across campus spanned many sectors, from agriculture and food to biology and life sciences, cleantech, medtech, edtech, fintech, hardware, digital platforms and nonprofit impact ventures. A multidisciplinary team of faculty and alumni founders reviewed applications, with recipients selected on the merit of the applications, along with research rigor and the clarity of the proposed project.”

Learn more about the program, eligibility and requirements . If you have questions or want to receive information about upcoming workshops and the upcoming funding cycle, please email  [email protected] .

Cristina Hatem

• ‘Syracuse University Winter’ Inspires June Giving Friday, May 24, 2024, By Shaina M. Hill
• Volunteers Needed to Host Fulbright Scholars Friday, May 24, 2024, By News Staff
• Women’s Volleyball Team to Host Summer Camps Friday, May 24, 2024, By News Staff
• ‘Most Recent Cyberattacks on Water Systems Won’t Be the Last’ Says iSchool Cybersecurity Expert Wednesday, May 22, 2024, By Daryl Lovell
• Syracuse Stage Continues 50th-Anniversary Celebration With ‘Cast Party’ Fundraiser Wednesday, May 22, 2024, By News Staff

More In Campus & Community

Volunteers needed to host fulbright scholars.

Each summer, students from around the world come to Syracuse University as Fulbright Scholars, and International Programs within the College of Professional Studies is seeking volunteers to host these Fulbright Scholars for a meal during their time in Central New…

Women’s Volleyball Team to Host Summer Camps

For the second year in a row, Syracuse women’s volleyball head coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam and his coaching staff have opened registration for their 2024 volleyball camps, which will begin in June. The camps will occur on campus in the Women’s Building,…

Who Had the Best NFL Draft? Falk College Sport Management Students

And with the first pick of volunteers for the 2024 NFL Draft, the Detroit Sports Commission selects . . . Falk College sport management and sport analytics students! For the NFL Draft in late April, the Detroit Sports Commission and…

Awards Recognize Success of Assessment Through Engagement and Collaboration

Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness (IE) presented awards to several faculty and staff members, students, offices and programs during the One University Assessment Celebration on April 26, in the School of Education, Education Commons. In her opening remarks, Lois Agnew,…

New Student Representatives to the Board of Trustees Named

The Board of Trustees welcomes four new undergraduate, graduate and law student representatives to the board. All have been deeply engaged in student activities while pursuing diverse career paths and will bring new insights to the governance process. The undergraduate…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact [email protected] .

Connect With Us

For the media.