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Introducing our Joint Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) / Dunhill Medical Trust Fellows

The aim of this joint fellowship scheme is to help talented early career hearing researchers make the transition from post-doctoral scientist to independent investigator, and we are delighted to have been working with RNID to offer this opportunity for a number of years. Our most recent joint Fellows from 2021 are Dr Jing-Yi (Ginny) Jeng and Dr Magdalena Zak.

Left: portrait photograph of smiling woman with dark hair and glasses. Right: portrait photograph of smiling woman with brown hair and pink hoodie stood in a grassy field.
Dr Jing-Yi Jeng (Left) and Dr Magdalena Zak (Right), our two jointly-funded Fellows from 2021.

Ginny is a member of the Hearing Research Group at the University of Sheffield, whose research aims to understand the mechanisms underlying age-related hearing loss (ARHL). Particularly, she’s studying the role of a gene linked to ARHL in the hair cells of the inner ear. To learn more about Ginny’s research, feel free to visit the RNID website for a helpful summary.

Magdalena is based at the Ear Institute at University College London (UCL). Her project focusses on the processes determining whether a developing hair cell becomes part of the hearing or balance system. You can read more about Magdalena’s research on the RNID website too.

For this scheme, all eligible applications were externally peer reviewed and then shortlisted for interview by the RNID’s Future Leaders Review Panel. In 2021, the Future Leaders Review Panel consisted of:

  • Professor Brian Moore, University of Cambridge (Chair)
  • Professor Andrea Streit, King’s College London
  • Professor Chris Plack, University of Manchester
  • The late Dr Christian Füllgrabe, then at Loughborough University
  • Dr Dan Jagger, UCL
  • Dr Deborah Vickers, University of Cambridge
  • Professor Karen Lowton, University of Sussex (representing the Dunhill Medical Trust Research Grants Committee)
  • Dr Will Sedley, Newcastle University

Following interviews with the Future Leaders Review Panel and ratification by our Research Grants Committee, the success rate for this call was 33%. Ginny and Magdalena follow in the footsteps of Dr Chris Hardy and Dr Katie Smith, both at UCL, who were awarded their joint Fellowships in 2018 (with a success rate of 17%).

In the 2022 round of the scheme, the RNID solely funded one Fellowship (with a success rate of 20%) and no co-funded awards were made. The Future Leaders Review Panel for that year consisted of:

  • Professor Brian Moore, University of Cambridge (Chair)
  • The late Dr Christian Füllgrabe, then at UCL
  • Dr Dan Jagger, UCL
  • Dr Deborah Vickers, University of Cambridge
  • Professor Karen Lowton, University of Sussex (representing the Dunhill Medical Trust Research Grants Committee)
  • Dr Mark Wallace, University of Nottingham
  • Professor Walter Marcotti, University of Sheffield

The latest round of the joint Fellowship scheme ran earlier this year, and we will be announcing the outcome in due course. In the meantime, feel free to look at our funding call on the topic of addressing age-related issues of hearing and/or vision through healthcare technologies; the deadline for expression of interest applications is 5pm on Friday 21st July 2023.

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