Awards from the fifth Centre for Future Health Funding Round

The Centre for Future Health Funding Review Group met on 1 November 2019 to consider forty applications for funding from departments across all three faculties of the University.

Applications were both to prime new work and support existing projects to achieve greater external impact. There was also dedicated support for recently appointed academic staff at lecturer and senior lecturer level to help them kick-start their research programmes and money for establishing and cementing external partnerships, whether with other academic institutions or with other health-related organisations. The standard of applications was very high and of the £1.73 million requested, almost half was awarded to 21 projects across eleven departments. Details of the individual projects are listed below. Congratulations is due to all the recipients.

Further details about the majority of projects we have funded to date can be found on our 'Funded Projects' page.

Project leadProject titleLead department
Heidi Baseler Effects of 670nm photobiomodulation on mitochondrial function in the human brain Psychology
William Brackenbury Characterisation of sodium transport as a novel biomarker of aggression in colon cancer specimens Biology
Han-Jou Chen Deep sequencing of the C9orf72 GGGGCC-repeat expansion in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) Biology
Rachel Curwen Research, Partnership and Knowledge Exchange Development Support for Biomedical Research at the University of York Research and Enterprise
Helena Daffern Improving cleft palate treatment with acoustics: Detecting Velo-Pharyngeal Insufficiency using external noise excitation Electronic Engineering
Martin Fascione Resurrecting ancestral sugars: a novel molecular archaeology approach to Prostate cancer immunotherapy Chemistry
Paul Genever Optimised, scaled-up production of exosomes from mesenchymal stem cells through outsourced process development Biology
Simon Gilbody The Closing the Gap cohort: building a platform for York-led interdisciplinary research programme in mental health Health Sciences
Andrew Holding Establishing a pipeline for the isolation and expansion of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) cells from healthy volunteers followed by their first characterisation using single-cell transcriptomics  Biology 
Rowena Jacobs  Growing the Involvement@York Network and Building a Sustainable Service Model and Business Case for an Embedded Institutional Patient and Public Involvement Resource at the University of York  Centre for Health Economics 
David Kent  Establishing single cell RNA-sequencing and ATAC-sequencing to decipher biological heterogeneity in blood cells  Biology 
Bob Phillips The Umbrella Consortium – bringing together the global leaders in research into infection in children with cancer Centre for Reviews & Dissemination
Michael Plevin A microfluidic device for in vitro characterision of biomolecular liquid-liquid phase separation: from soft matter physics to biomedical research via solution biophysics Biology
Stephanie Prady A feasibility study into producing a national housing profile of people with severe mental illness Health Sciences
Brett Sallach Developing methodologies to determine the fate of antibiotics and their metabolites in food crops in order to inform risk assessment for human health Environment and Geography
Christopher Spicer Matching self-healing hydrogels to diverse cardiac tissues Chemistry
Penny Spikins The origins of healthcare in its social context Archaeology
Sean Sweeney Characterisation of a molecular switch between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia Biology
Paul Tiffin Personalising Mental Health Treatments for Young People Using Machine Intelligence (ProMetheUs) Health Sciences
Reidun Twarock A Novel Platform Technology for Synthetic Vaccines and Gene Delivery Systems Mathematics
Christina van der Feltz-Cornelis International collaboration to support English and Dutch patients with Medically Unexplained Symptoms(MUS), their carers and clinicians to independently formulate research priorities for their condition Health Sciences