NZ and Singapore set up first joint R&D research fund in heart disease and cancer

Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has teamed up with the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) to launch the new A*STAR-NZ Joint Research Fund worth $2.31 million for research in heart disease and cancer.

The joint research fund, which will involve A*STAR and HRC investing S$1.74million each, is open to researchers from Singapore and New Zealand.

It stipulates that each application must be made up of at least one principal investigator from Singapore and one principal investigator from New Zealand.

The first grant call will focus on research into heart disease and is scheduled for May 2009.

Twenty-one top scientists from the two countries will be meeting in Christchurch from 6 – 7 October 2008 for a symposium, jointly chaired by Professor Judith Swain (Executive Director of A*STAR’s Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences in Singapore) and Professor Mark Richards (University of Otago in New Zealand, to discuss collaborative research in heart disease.

The second grant call for research in cancer, scheduled for May 2010, will see experts in the field of cancer research converging on Singapore for a symposium in October 2009, jointly chaired by Professor Neal Copeland (Executive Director of A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore) and Professor Peter Lobie (Liggins Institute in the University of Auckland in New Zealand).

At the meeting, they will discuss possible joint research projects in cancer.