College of benefactors 2013-14

The Wellcome Trust

Represented by Dr Jeremy Farrar OBE, Director

Saturday 18 January 2014 3:00pm

We are delighted to welcome The Wellcome Trust into the University of Exeter’s College of Benefactors.

The Wellcome Trust is a long-standing supporter and partner of the University of Exeter. In 2010 the Mood Disorders Centre was established as a partnership between the University and the NHS to address key priorities in understanding and treating depression.

In 2010 as a result of a £3.6 million Capital Award from the Wellcome Trust, The Sir Henry Wellcome Building for Mood Disorders Research was established. The facility is dedicated to the improvement of the understanding and treatment of mood disorders. The state-of-the art, fit-for-purpose clinical research facility houses individual and group treatment rooms, with built-in audio visual recording, plus office and meeting space for clinical research.

Most recently, The Wellcome Trust joined with the Wolfson Foundation to grant £4.75 million towards a cutting-edge centre for translational medicine at Exeter. The Wellcome Wolfson Medical Research Centre is part of a £19 million investment in the power and potential of research, innovation, learning and development by The Wellcome Trust, The Wolfson Foundation, the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust and the University. The centre, based at the NHS Trust’s Wonford site, will provide a unique and inspirational teaching and research facility close to the University’s Medical School at St Luke’s campus, and is due to be completed later this year.

The Wellcome Trust supports and promotes outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts. More than £12 billion in real terms has been awarded over the last 77 years.

Jeremy Farrar is Director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds. Before joining the Trust he was Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, where his research interests were in infectious diseases, tropical health and emerging infections. He has contributed to 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and served on several World Health Organization advisory committees.

Jeremy was appointed an OBE in 2005 for services to Tropical Medicine, and he has been awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Government of Vietnam, Frederick Murgatroyd Prize for Tropical Medicine by the Royal College Physicians and the Bailey Ashford Award by the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and chairs the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium, a global initiative to share data about emerging diseases that could become epidemics or pandemics.