University of Sydney launches $300m Horizon fellowship scheme
The University of Sydney is spending its wealth on a $300m scheme to help young researchers kick start their academic career.
The cash-rich University of Sydney has selected the first 40 researchers to benefit from its $300m Horizon Fellows program, a new scheme that will mine the institution’s recent budget surpluses to give talented early to mid-career academics a path to success.
Fifteen academics from within the university and 25 from outside have won one of the coveted fellowships, which gives them a permanent academic job and up to $500,000 in research funding across the next five years.
The university will invest $100m in the first round of 40 fellows, announced on Wednesday, who were chosen from 1400 applicants. Another 40 Horizon research fellows will be selected to start next year, followed by a further 40 in 2026, which means the program in total is a $300m investment in future researchers.
The new fellows were chosen for their multidisciplinary capacity and have expertise across a range of topics including climate change, health and sustainability.
One of them, bioengineer Ann-Na Cho, will work on integrating human brain tissue with a microchip to advance personalised medicine.
Another fellow, engineer Federico Tartarini, researches heat stress on people. He says the fellowship will help him further his research, including “how to deliver warning systems and population-level cooling interventions at an urban, building and personal level”.
Research areas of other fellows include using artificial intelligence in aged care; developing better zinc-metal batteries; preventing stress leading to mental illness; priming of the immune system in childhood; integrated modelling of sustainable energy, climate and food systems; using music to improve mental health; and developing a quantum simulator for drug design.
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott said the $100m investment in the first tranche was alone unprecedented in Australian universities.
He said the program delivered on the university’s undertaking to “deliver excellent research for the common good”.
The launch of the Horizon fellowship scheme follows the University of Sydney’s huge budget surpluses – $1bn in 2021 and $300m in 2022 – because of its success in the Chinese student market, giving it a financial freedom enjoyed by few other universities.
“The fellowships have allowed us to retain outstanding talent already at the university and attract brilliant talent from outside,” the university’s deputy vice-chancellor (research) Emma Johnson said
She said the unique component of the Horizon fellowships was that they were not for a fixed term. The fellows have a continuing position at the university and, in addition to research funding, also get training and support to develop their leadership and teaching skills.
“What we are trying to do is provide security early on and provide the opportunity to get their research labs and programs established,” Professor Johnson said.
She said the fellowships were designed to make it easier for academics to navigate their early career when they were trying to get research grants, recruit research students and hold down a teaching position.
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