Directors' Fund Grants Round 1 Awarded

VALIDATE provides Directors' Fund awards of up to £5,000 to support innovative research projects by our members.

From our first funding round, we are excited to support 7 groundbreaking projects:

Vaccines Across Species: understanding mechanisms, importance, and shared benefits under a One Health approach led by Dr Susana Flores Villalva, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP), Mexico
Employing a high-throughput screening platform to identify epitopes recognised by mycobacteria-reactive TCRs that expand in the lung mucosa following aerosol BCG challenge led by Dr Shuailin Li, University of Oxford, United Kingdom (UK)
Understanding Upper-airway Pathobiont Colonization and Risk Factors in Paediatric Tuberculosis (UPLIFT-TB) led by Dr Suventha Moodley, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
M. ulcerans challenge agent clinical-grade manufacture led by Dr Stephen Muhi, University of Melbourne & Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia
LINE; Vaccines around the city led by Dr Cristian Alfredo Segura-Cerda, Centro de Investigación y Asistencia en Tecnología y Diseño de Jalisco (CIATEJ) & Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI), Mexico
Assessing the feasibility, acceptability, and implementation strategies for novel TB vaccines among adolescents and adults in Nigeria led by Mr Oluwaseun Taofeek, Crescent University, Abeokuta (CUAB), Nigeria
Design and development of an open-source ELISpot reader enabled by 3D printing led by Dr Andy Tran - City St George’s, University of London (SGUL), United Kingdom (UK)