Research Development Fund

WUN is pleased to announce the results of the 2019 round of the Research Development Fund (RDF) applications.  These awards, which facilitate collaborative research among WUN universities, will bring our financial investment in establishing new WUN Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs) to more than £170,000 over the past six months.

From among 31 applications, we have been able to support 15 projects from the RDF.  Notably, all 23 WUN member universities are represented on awarded projects research teams in this round.  These new projects join 88 existing IRGs that have engaged over 2300 researchers across the Network.

Since 2009 the WUN Research Development Fund (RDF) has directly invested over £2 million to establish research projects on problems of global significance, and on which member universities, working together, can make distinctive progress.

New technologies are capturing different information about health and treatments, opening up new pathways for more efficient and effective care. With its distinctive collaborative model, the WUN Digital Health Research Network has founded a new international society and is developing methodologies for studying and evaluating digital health innovations.  Click through for the full story.

Sixteen projects have been awarded funds to begin in 2019.

WUN research: an inexpensive and easily replicable journalling exercise can build resilience in pregnant women affected by natural disaster.

The RDF provides researchers in WUN universities with grants of up to £10,000 to foster research collaborations across the network.

First stage of ongoing progress to develop a “one-stop-shop” for international data

WUN researcher to address International Forum on Migration Data Statistics in Paris

The WUN Symposium cum Research Summit on Impacts of Grain Legume Research and Development in Developing Countries held at CUHK on 8-17 June 2017 brought together over 100 participants from six continents to exchange knowledge and ideas on the development of legumes research.

WUN announces the results of the 2016 Research Development Fund round.

International symposium involving MDGT group to be held in Bristol in March 2017.

“It has been very difficult to get these [results] published, because the concept of adolescent boys, having impact on their offspring born years later is new and editors could not believe our findings. I think that the WUN can inspire further research to support our findings and convey the new concepts to public health policy makers…”

Multi-disciplinary team from the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) publishes in Nature Plants.

The Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) announced today the results of the 2015 round of the annual Research Development Fund, marking a direct investment in international, interdisciplinary research of £156,213.

In communities where livelihoods are linked to the land and sea, environmental security is of utmost importance. This is particularly true in the developing nations of the Asia-Pacific, where many localities have a high dependency on fisheries, tourism and agriculture. Moreover, global changes are increasingly resulting in challenging localised impacts, such as increased frequency of extreme events. Thus, understanding the social-environment system is imperative to providing solutions for responding to climate change.

Medical research and advanced mathematics are usually considered separate disciplines. But for one WUN collaboration, bringing maths and biology together could hold the key to understanding how cells in the human body signal to each other, and might potentially unlock the secrets of a range of non-communicable diseases.

WUN is pleased to announce the launch of the 2015 Research Development Fund (RDF). The RDF is an annual competitive grant scheme designed to foster innovative, high quality and sustainable research among member universities.

Global food security has become an increasingly important issue as climate change further reduces the amount of land available for farming. Coupled to this is the higher demand for animal protein as developing nations become wealthier, and a higher demand for cereals, making them less attractive as animal feed at both an economic and social level. This has resulted on a greater emphasis on ruminant farming (e.g. cattle and goats) because these animals are capable of converting feed unsuitable for human consumption into high-value protein.

From climate change to improving public health, the world’s 350 million Indigenous people share a number of urgent challenges in common. Yet while many Indigenous groups are actively involved in forging solutions to the issues they face, there are surprisingly few organisations dedicated to disseminating and sharing their insights.

Health literacy is a relatively young field of research which focuses on people’s ability to understand health information and make decisions about their own health care. By helping patients to become more health literate, researchers hope to find ways to improve public health outcomes across low, middle and high-income countries.

One of the world’s most vital resources—water—is increasingly at the centre of debate. Its scarcity has intensified the movement toward water as a human right, yet private control over water utilities is simultaneously increasing. Although this tension is only just emerging, experts believe it will rapidly intensify as more investors seek access to fresh water in new countries.

The Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) announced today the results of the 2014 round of the annual Research Development Fund, marking a direct investment into international, interdisciplinary research of £165,671 across 17 projects.

Caring for the growing number of patients with non-communicable disease is a challenge faced by policy-makers and healthcare providers across the world. To tackle the issue, a team of WUN experts in healthcare system planning have come together to share their unique insights from across Canada, the UK and Australia.

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) are one of the most important emerging health concerns. Approximately one in every 100 children is diagnosed with an ASC, which includes autism, Asperger syndrome and atypical autism. 

While most medical research focuses on the quest for new treatments, much less attention is paid to how we can make better use of medicines that already exist. Yet up to half of patients don’t take long-term medicines as prescribed, which can result in serious harm or even death.

Every day more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created, and its growing every day. What are the possibilities that could be unleashed by analysing and applying that data to solve some of the globe’s most pressing challenges? 

WUN is pleased to announce the launch of the 2014 Research Development Fund.