Saudi-based Community Jameel to fund infectious disease research at Imperial College London

Saudi-based foundation Community Jameel and Imperial College London have launched a fund that will provide grants of up to $65,000 for research on coronaviruses and other infectious diseases.

The first round of funding, launched today, will support projects focused on the transmission of coronaviruses – including Covid-19, SARS and MERS – and also the pathogenesis of these diseases, or how they develop.

The Jameel Fund will also fund complementary research projects at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, to strengthen research collaborations between Imperial and Saudi universities in this field.

Community Jameel has a history of funding public health research at Imperial College. In 2019, Community Jameel and Imperial College co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics. Led by renowned epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson, the Jameel Institute has supported Imperial College’s Covid-19 Response Team, which has been at the forefront in the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

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The Community Jameel Imperial College Covid-19 Excellence Fund launched last year has funded diverse projects, including those looking at new techniques that would allow automated production of custom-fit PPE for healthcare workers, investigating the potential role that Covid-19 plays in neurological disease, and developing a clinical tool for predicting risk of deterioration in Covid-19 patients.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the need to be able to respond quickly to infectious diseases to prevent their spread,’ said Professor Alice Gast, president of Imperial College London. “This generous grant will create new opportunities for collaboration to protect future generations against this global threat, allowing us to move faster and go further.”