Alice Davidson becomes a UKRI ‘Future Leader’
14 January 2020
Congratulations to Dr Alice Davidson, researcher at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, on being awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship!
Dr Alice Davidson is a researcher at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, which has an integral partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital.
In 2019, Dr Davidson was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, an award that funds and recognises future leaders within science and innovation.
The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship
The Future Leaders Fellowship is a new initiative from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to give researchers the opportunity and space to develop and grow as leaders in their field, and to help universities and businesses in the UK recruit, train and retain the world’s best researchers and innovators, keeping the UK at the cutting-edge of innovation.
The UKRI award is for four years of funding (with a possible extension of three more), which will allow Alice to stay here at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and continue her research into eye conditions like Fuchs Dystrophy.
She’s focusing on understanding the genetic changes that can affect the cornea (the front of the eye), and how those changes lead to the development of disease.
She’s hoping that a better understanding of these diseases will enable us to develop new treatments that prevent them occurring in the first place.
More information on the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship can be found on the gov.uk website.
Helping future leaders to grow
Alice was also recently awarded a Moorfields Eye Charity Career Development Award, which she said was “instrumental” in putting forward a successful application for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
She says, “Without my Moorfields Eye Charity Career Development Award, I wouldn’t have had the time and the space to develop my ideas and make my application [for the Future Leaders Fellowship] as strong as possible.”
Moorfields Eye Charity are really leading the way with providing this kind of funding to young investigators.
Dr Alice Davidson
Our Career Development Award offer an exciting opportunity to provide short term support to science researchers, clinical and allied health professionals who are already on an academic career track and are of the calibre to be future leaders of ophthalmic research and clinical practice.
These awards will enable individuals to focus on their research and to capitalise on other external funding opportunities to develop their research programmes.
