Each year, The Evelyn Trust funds a one year Research Training Fellowship (RTF) for a medic who shows exceptional promise in the field of research. The Cambridge Clinical Research Fellowships Scheme awards grants at the start of the clinical academic training pathway. Grants cover a year of salary and consumables, enabling Fellows to gain experience and collect pilot data.

“The Fellowships are a valuable springboard into a medical research career, attracting very talented candidates who go on to deliver ground-breaking research. Enabling clinicians to begin their PhD research puts them in a great position to compete successfully for further research funding. We’re really proud of this important seed funding, with our Fellows gaining prestigious RTFs with the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). Applications for the 2021 RTF are open now, closing in early April, so we look forward to choosing the next amazing Fellow,” explains Rebecca Wood, Charity Director of The Evelyn Trust.

The RTFs have been spread across a range of specialities and in 2021, the latest Fellow to take his next step is Dr Joseph Hutton, now a brand new Medical Research Council Clinical Research Fellow. During his Fellowship year, Joe was working on resolving the movement and function of mononuclear phagocytes – a type of white blood cell – in psoriatic arthritis. Its the second most common form of arthritis, but it is currently much less well understood than rheumatoid arthritis.

“I’m extremely grateful to the Evelyn Trust for the RTF. Without the Fellowship, it would have been immeasurably hard to secure further funding and I don’t think my research would be advancing as it is now,” says Joe.

The Trust works in partnership with Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre to run the Fellowship scheme. Applications for the RTF are open until 07 April 2021 via the ACT website here.