On the eighth day of Christmas MND research gave to me: Eight members of the Research Development team

“On the eighth day of Christmas MND research gives to you… EIGHT members of the Research Development team”

We would like to wish all our blog readers Happy New Year! Looking forward, like many others, we have made our New Year’s resolutions of what we’d like to achieve in 2015:

Brian Dickie (Director of Research Development): “I’m looking forward to developing closer relationships with other funding agencies, to look at research opportunities that we may not be able to do on our own. We expect researchers around the world to work together, so their ‘joined up thinking’ should be supported by our ‘joined up funding’.”

Pauline Frear (Personal Assistant to the Director of Research Development and Team Administrator): “Although the last one has only just finished (or so it seems), one of the first jobs I’ll be doing this year is working on the details for the launch of the next International Symposium on ALS/MND – it’s called the first announcement and tells the worldwide MND research community the topics that will be covered in the meeting in December 2015.

Belinda Cupid (Head of Research): ‘I’d like to get more of our researchers to publish their results in a way that everyone can read them for free – in the research community this is known as ‘open access’ you can find out more about it here: www.mndassociation.org/openaccess.”

Sadie Vile (Research Grants Manager): This year I will be working on the launch of a fellowship scheme for biomedical scientists – it’s a way to develop and support the careers of laboratory-based MND researchers. We already have a successful scheme that clinic-based researchers can apply to. Watch this space!

Natasha Rowe (Research Grants Co-ordinator): I co-ordinate the applications from researchers asking us for money in the form a of research grant. My main priority in the first half of the year will be keeping on top of our biggest ever funding round!

Laura Harris (Research Grants Administrator): “We ask independent experts to review the funding applications from researchers. To ensure the reviewers give us an unbiased opinion, I’ll be checking that there aren’t any overlapping interests between them and the applicant”

Lucy Smith (Research Information Administrator): “The DNA Bank is in demand at the moment! We’ve had several applications for using samples. Early in the New Year I’ll be working hard to get these to the researchers that requested them – so they in turn can learn more about the causes of MND.”

Samantha Price (Research Information Co-ordinator): “Communicating and sharing the latest MND research news is a year-long job for me that doesn’t stop for holidays! As well as reporting on any MND research news stories, this year I hope to have fully established our MND research newsletter ‘What’s happening in MND research?’ better communicating our research and ways people living with MND and everyone who cares for them can get involved.”