MESSAGE FROM THE ACADEMIC DIRECTOR
Fresh from a good holiday, it is great to be back and I’m looking forward to a busy and productive year. We have a large share of exciting projects underway and planning is already well progressed for this year’s seminar series. It has been wonderful to see substantial new funding coming to the Kolling to continue our high- quality and impactful program of research. Pleasingly, our teams secured significant funding throughout last year, and in recent weeks our researchers were awarded more than $1.6 million through the National Health and Medical Research Council and more than $750,000 through the National Institutes of Health. Read on to discover the details of these grants. I’m sure a large part of our success is due to our commitment to collaboration both within and outside the Kolling. There are few institutes with so many skilled and experienced researchers under the one roof, and I would like to acknowledge and thank the joint venture partners for their considerable efforts to strengthen our research and increase our impact locally, nationally and internationally. Increased collaboration has been one of our key priorities in recent years, and we are clearly realising the benefits of this approach. Not only are we seeing collaboration on large-scale international projects,
but we are seeing increasing interdisciplinary collaboration across the Kolling. It was pleasing to see a significant investment in a collaborative data science initiative between the Sydney Precision Data Science Centre and the Kolling Institute. This exciting program will increase our research capacity in genomics, bioinformatics, health informatics and statistics. More than $150,000 will be shared equally across six teams. I would like to acknowledge the researchers who are driving substantial improvements in their individual areas of expertise, and I’m pleased that we have been able to direct the spotlight onto some of their significant achievements through the Kolling awards program and the Beryl and Jack Jacobs travel awards. These travel opportunities have been made possible with the very generous support of the Skipper-Jacobs Charitable Trust. Read on to learn more about this impressive group of researchers who are making tangible gains and helping to lift standards of care across the community. Some of our researchers have also received high-profile national awards, including a recent Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovation award to one of our up-and-coming researchers Cameron Evans. The funding means Cameron will be able to progress
his work investigating the use of a new medication for diabetic foot ulcers and arterial disease. In 2024, a large collection of events will be co-ordinated from our popular Research Seminar Series to our annual Kolling Research Symposium. The inaugural event was staged at the end of last year, and we have received plenty of positive feedback. It was an excellent opportunity to showcase our expertise to researchers within the Kolling and to a much broader external audience. Planning for this year’s event and many others is already underway. As we head into 2024, it is a good time to assess the impact of our current research strategy and begin discussions around the next one. The implementation of this strategy has delivered measurable improvements to the Kolling and I expect the next strategy will extend on those gains and provide widespread additional support. Thank you to everyone for your continued dedication and considerable contribution. I look forward to another exciting year ahead. Professor James Elliott
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KOLLINGNEWS | FEBRUARY 2024
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