Over £75k awarded to support NC3Rs-funded early career researchers

The Early Career Engagement award scheme has supported 32 PhD students, Training Fellows and postdoctoral researchers since its launch in 2022. We established the scheme to help researchers navigate the unique challenges in the early stages of a scientific career, including gaining independent research funding and forming networks and collaborations. The funding supports NC3Rs-funded early career researchers to undertake activities that maximise the 3Rs impact of their work, building a legacy to support their next career steps.

Among this years’ awardees is Max Dooley at University of Nottingham, who received funding to produce a portable, affordable diffuse Raman spectroscopy (DRS) instrument for non-invasive imaging. Building on the DRS developed during his postdoc, Max will collaborate with Dr Amy Marriott, University of Liverpool, to apply Raman scattering to refine mouse snakebite envenoming studies. 

Evgenia Maslova, an NC3Rs-funded PhD student at Brunel University, will use the award to drive uptake of the Galleria mellonella replacement model. Evgenia will create video methods of the burn wounding approach developed during her PhD, produce a 3D printed waxmoth larvae model and organise an in-person workshop in collaboration with the Galleria mellonella Research Centre to help train new users in practical techniques. 

Another award was made to Alex Sprules, based at University of Sheffield. Alex’s PhD has focused on developing and validating a 3D myeloma model and the Early Career Engagement award will allow her to scale up scaffold manufacture, making them commercially available for other groups to adopt up the replacement approach.

Other activities include validation experiments to show 3Rs approaches are fit-for-purpose, conducting pilot studies to apply 3Rs approaches to new research questions and promoting 3Rs tools and technologies through conferences and secondments. 

Early Career Engagement Awards were awarded to:

• Ghalia Abel (PhD Student, University of Exeter, £7,000).
• Adriana Buskin (Fellow, Newcastle University, £13,924.70).
• Max Dooley (Postdoctoral researcher, University of Nottingham, £12,000).
• Sean Hockney (PhD Student, Northumbria University, £8,000.07).
• Evgenia Maslova (PhD Student, Brunel University, £8,794).
• Natalia Moreno Sierra (PhD Student, Queen Mary University of London, £10,000).
• Karolina Radziun, (PhD Student, University of Liverpool, £9,881.30).
• Alexandria Sprules (PhD Student, University of Sheffield, £6,870).