Terry Snow commits to long term funding for medical research

Canberra billionaire Terry Snow and his family will invest in a long-term effort to make key medical breakthroughs in Australia.

Terry Snow (left) and Tom Snow launch the new Snow Fellowships for medical research in Canberra.

Canberra billionaire Terry Snow and his family will invest up to $16 million a year to fund universities and medical research institutions in a long-term effort to make key medical breakthroughs in Australia.

In a plan announced on Tuesday the family, which owns Canberra airport, will commit to funding two new research efforts every year — each to be led by a Snow Fellow — that will tackle tough problems in medicine.

The two annual grants, which will offer up to $1 million a year for eight years, will be made through the new Snow Medical Research Foundation, chaired by Terry’s son Tom Snow.

“We’ve designed a program to give the best leaders the tools to do the bold research,” said Mr Tom Snow.

“We will be looking for people who might have a completely different set of ideas which might take a longer time to develop.”

When fully up and running the foundation will be continuously funding 16 fellows and their research teams, each with up to $1 million a year.

The funding for each fellowship will provide salaries for the Snow Fellow and postdoctoral researchers, top-ups for PhD students on scholarships, laboratory set-up and running costs. as well has training teams in the non-science skills they need for success.

“We want to invest in training, in leadership and management to support these people. We’re a business family and we see that partnership between researchers and business as critical,” Mr Snow said.

Each Snow Fellow and their research team will be linked with an Australian institution.

The foundation is already working with some institutions to develop the model and will announce the first grants of an initial pilot round of fellowships early next year.

At that time the foundation will also call for applications for the first broad round of fellowships, which be open to all Australian universities and medical research institutions.

Fellowships will be open to both Australian and international scientists, but they must be based in an Australian institution. Mr Snow said it was possible that a fellowship could be the incentive which brings talented Australian expatriate scientists back from overseas.

He said the foundation was”completely agnostic” as to which areas of medical research it would fund, with the key motivation being to support ambitious projects that would make a difference. He said he expected teams would be multidisciplinary, for example including expertise in engineering, information technology and artificial intelligence.

A panel of experts will advise the foundation on the selection of projects to fund.

The Snow Medical Research Foundation is just the latest philanthropic initiative for Mr Terry Snow, who made his fortune in property development.

His daughter Georgina Byron runs the Snow Foundation, with a fund of $110 million that it uses to fund social initiatives.

Mr Terry Snow told The Australian earlier this year that he saw an opportunity make a big difference through philanthropic gifts to medical research.

He said then that Australia needed the “buying power” to bring research talent into institutions to “help develop cures to improve our lives”.