Trust marks Golden Jubilee with £1m grants

The RCVS Trust has this week awarded over £1,000,000 to nearly 60 innovative and high-calibre research and animal welfare projects in the UK and overseas to mark its Golden Jubilee year.

Gerri McHugh, Director of the Trust, said “We are delighted to have hit the £1 million mark this year which compares very favourably with the £60,000 we were disbursing five short years ago. This significant uplift in funding has enabled us to fund a much wider range of innovative initiatives at the seven UK veterinary schools and in practices across the UK."

In addition to a £250,000 investment in six new UK residencies and nearly £120,000 across nine new Blue Sky Research projects, the Trust has released an additional £500,000 to fund two Golden Jubilee Awards: one at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies looking at canine ageing and regeneration, and another at Liverpool University's Faculty of Veterinary Science in veterinary pathogen genomics.

The Trust has also been able to fund a number of extremely worthy overseas projects through its network of charity partners including SPANA, Wildlife Vets International and the Worldwide Veterinary Service.

"We are very pleased to have made a significant investment in a range of welfare initiatives for the veterinary profession. These include an evaluation of young graduate wellbeing, the development of support schemes for recent graduates and a continued commitment to the excellent Lancaster Final Year Seminar," said Gerri, adding:

"The RCVS Trust is a small but very ambitious charity and we are working hard to raise additional funds and develop new services to ensure that our Golden Jubilee year marks a very positive chapter in our history.”

On hearing the news of his £250,000 Golden Jubilee Award, Dr Alan Radford, at the University of Liverpool said: “This RCVS Trust Golden Jubilee Award is great news. The award will allow us to use our state of the art 454-pyrosequencing platform to develop a centre of excellence in veterinary pathogen genomics at Liverpool.

"This centre will act as a national resource, bringing together some 50 scientists from across the UK, and providing them with the funding, the access to the new-generation sequencing technologies, the academic support and the training necessary to sequence 50 pathogen genomes of veterinary significance, one for each of the 50 years of the RCVS Trust.

"As well as increasing our understanding of these pathogens and facilitating their control, this project will produce a cadre of veterinary scientists that are better equipped to make use of new sequencing technologies in this exciting genomic era.”

Penny Cusdin, Development Manager at Wildlife Vets International who has been awarded a £5,000 Small Grant added: “Our Small Grant from the RCVS Trust will allow us to send a specialist vet out to Zimbabwe, to help set up a veterinary facility in a National Park there.

"Not only will the clinic provide care for endangered African Painted Dogs, which urgently require veterinary facilities, it will also provide a base for the other veterinary needs of the surrounding National Park and local community.

"This funding will help to make sure that the facility gets the best possible start in making a huge difference to animal, and human, populations in the area, and we are extremely grateful to the RCVS Trust for supporting this initiative”.

Download the list of 2008 awards (PDF file - 92Kb)