New Funding Announcements

EU Announces New Research Infrastructure Selections

Amount: €14.4 billion ($16.7 billion = €0.86 = $1)

Recipient: European organizations

Funder: EU

Date Announced: September

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has unveiled its 2018 Roadmap Update. The ESFRI develops policy and strategy for the EU Research Infrastructure (RI). Its Roadmap is used by EU countries to plan for national and EU-wide research infrastructure projects, which are facilities open to all scientists in Europe.

Among the six new facilities announced in the latest Roadmap are three addressing food, environmental and energy research. Addressing the fields of health and food are the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator (EU­-IBISBA) for advancing industrial biotechnology and METROFOOD-RI for applying metrology to food and nutrition, including food safety.

Serving environmental needs, the Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone & Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER) studies ecosystem functions and structure. In the field of energy research, the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility-DEMO Oriented NEutron Source (IFMIF-­DONES) will study and test materials for use in a fusion reactor.

The new Roadmap envisions €2.9 billion ($3.4 billion) over several years for 18 “ESFRI Projects” and “27 ESFRI Landmarks” (established RIs requiring ongoing support), worth a total of €14.4 billion ($16.7 billion).

Drug Discovery Projects Get an Extra $1 Billion

Amount: $1 billion

Recipients and Funders: Abbvie ($500 million) and Calico ($500 million)

Date Announced: June

Drug company Abbvie and Calico, a Google/Alphabet company addressing health and wellness, including drug discovery and disease treatments, have extended their collaboration by three years, pledging an additional one billion dollars to their joint work on age-related diseases. After 2022, Calico will advance the projects for 3 additional years, including the Phase IIa stage.

 

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Receives Record Donation

Amount: $120 million

Recipient: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Funder: The Anschutz Foundation

Date Announced: August

The gift will fund new faculty, research, technology transfer and the 390,000 ft2 (36,232 m2) Anschutz Health Sciences Building. Future resident programs of the Building include the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine and the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. The University’s focus on faculty recruitment will include the fields of personalized medicine and immunotherapy.

 

Foxconn Funds Interdisciplinary Research

Amount: $100 million

Recipient: University of Wisconsin—Madison

Funder: Foxconn Technology

Date Announced: August

The electronics giant’s donation will be matched by the University, and will create the Foxconn Institute for Research in Science and Technology. Part of the money is designated for the construction of a new building for the College of Engineering. Research conducted at the Institute will cover fields such as AI, semiconductors, computer science and health, including human genomics and immune cells. Foxconn will collaborate closely with the Institute.

 

$100 Million for Hospital Research Network

Amount: $100 million

Recipient: Rutgers University

Funder: RWJ Barnaas Health

Date Announced: July

In total, healthcare systems company RWJ Barnaas has committed to a 20-year investment of more than $1 billion. The public-private partnership will create an academic health system for patient care, physician education and training, and clinical research, including a new medical group. Specific plans are the addition to Rutgers of 100 new principal investigators over a 10-year period, hiring of world-renowned faculty and a new building for the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.  Six centers and institutes currently make up the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Science enterprise. According to northjersey.com, fields of investment will include cancer and cardiology.

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