An event was held at the British Ambassador’s Residence on 22 November 2017 to announce the winning projects and celebrate all shortlisted projects for the Newton Prize in Thailand. The Newton Prize is an annual £1 million prize that is awarded to existing or previous Newton funded projects, programmes or teams for excellent research and/or innovation that supports the economic development and social welfare of Newton partner countries. The 2017 Newton Prize countries include India, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, where winner(s) is selected from shortlisted projects for each country.
The winning project of the 2017 Newton Prize in Thailand was for the Molecular Pathology of Rare Genetic Diseases in Children, carried out by Prof. Philip Beales, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Prof. Vorasuk Shoterelersuk, Centre of Excellence for Medical Genetics at Chulalongkorn University.
Dr. Kallaya Sritunyalucksana of BIOTEC and Professor Grant Stentiford from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) were presented with a Chairman’s Award, an award specifically created due to the high calibre selection of applications from Thailand. Their project, an establishment of International Network for Shrimp Health (INSH), aims to link leading research laboratories in the UK and Thailand with government and industry stakeholders in order to meet the needs for rapid access to pathogen detection and surveillance services.
Dr. Kallaya Sritunyalucksana (L) and Prof. Vorasuk Shoterelersuk (R), winners of 2017 Newton Prize in Thailand. Other shortlisted projects from Thailand include:
- Bacterial Pathogenesis: Dissecting the Early Stages of Cellular Invasion by the Obligate Intracellular Bacterium Orientia Tsutsugamushi by – Dr. Jeanne Salje and Prof. Nicholas Day, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford – Dr. Somponnat Sampattavanich, Department of Pharmacology, Mahidol University
- Climate Ready Rice: Optimising Transpiration to Protect Rice Yields Under Abiotic Stresses by – Prof. Julie Gray, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, UK – Dr. Apichart Vanavichit, Rice Gene Discovery Unit, Kasetsart University, Thailand
- Genomic Epidemiology in Infectious Diseases – Pathogen Genomics Capacity Building by – Prof. Taane Clark, London School ofHygiene & Tropical Medicine – Dr. Prapat Suriyaphol, Mahidol University
The Newton UK-Thailand Research and Innovation Partnership Fund was launched in 2015. The partnership is formed under co-operation between the Governments of Thailand and the UK, aiming to strengthen science and innovation capacity and unlock further funding to support poverty alleviation through the cooperation between Thai and British institutes and personnel. The fund is organized into various programs covering three broad categories: People, Research, Translation.