By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter


Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) announced  two new funding programmes meant for supporting specific topics in research in several areas and to support emerging local scientists in the country at the 7th Annual Forum yesterday.
The first programme comes under the Grand Challenges Research Programme (GCRP). This  is the first funding programme by QNRF to focus on a specific theme of research which is ‘The Path towards Personalised Medicine’ (PPM). The second programme is Early Career Research Award (ECRA) to encourage local talent.
Announcing the new funding programmes, Dr Rekha Pillai, programme director, QNRF said that both the QNRF  programmes will be open for submission of applications from eligible candidates from next month.
She explained. “The new funding programmes aim to create a pool of scientific talent and build up research infrastructure in the country.The programmes will be focused on specific problems related to the grand challenges identified in the Qatar National Research Strategy. The strategy has 23 goals, 26 research objectives in 12 areas.  The earlier programmes were investigation driven, while the new programmes will be outcome driven.”
The new QNRF programme ‘The Path towards Personalised Medicine’ will be jointly funded by Qatar Biobank and will be aligned with the genome project. The outcome of this inaugural cycle will pave the way to embark on in-depth research in personalised medicine – one of the niche research areas for Qatar. PPM provides a grant of $1mn for a period of 2 years. The submission period will be from June  to October this year. Those who are selected for the grant will be announced by January 2016 and they can start working on the project thereafter.
The second new funding programme ECRA aims to develop Qatar’s local scientific talent pool by providing professional research experience to Qatari and Qatar-born scientists who have recently embarked upon their research career. ECRA provides a grant up to $150,000 per year. The submission period will start from next month to October this year. The  awardees of the fund will be announced in November- December.




Related Story