Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF)

As a “translation fund”, the MRFF will supercharge the growth of Australian health and medical research to better translate research into health outcomes, improve lives, build the economy and contribute to health system sustainability.

View MRFF application instructions

Overview
Open schemes
Forecast schemes
Peer review
Taskforce

The MRFF is a major new source of Federal Government funding for medical research; a sovereign fund that was set up in 2015 and on target for full capitalisation of $20B by 2020-21.

The Medical Research Future Fund Act 2015 requires the Minister for Health must take into account the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Priorities that are in force when approving MRFF grants.

These are the second set of priorities for the MRFF selected by the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board, and influence the format and direction of both competitive funding rounds and non-competitive investments.

The Department of Health has a useful overview of how the MRFF strategy and each set of priorities have informed the funding programs established so far. There will be opportunity to engage in the national consultations as future MRFF strategies and priorities are set, which will be an important way to represent the fields of research undertaken at the University of Adelaide.

Funding schemes	Min Data	Internal review	Close
National Critical Infrastructure Initiative Between $5 and 100M for new and innovative approaches to enhance and improve clinical trial infrastructure, and to extend existing clinical trials into rural, regional and remote areas of Australia. Rural, regional & remote clinical trial enabling infrastructure Applied artificial intelligence research in health		24 Feb 2020	3 Mar 2020
Australian Brain Cancer Mission To support the development of better approaches to address the medical, functional and psychosocial impacts of brain cancer to improve quality of life and the survivorship experience. Brain cancer survivorship		24 Feb 2020	3 Mar 2020
Stem Cell Therapies (GrantConnect) Between $250,000 and $1M for grants up to 2 years. Applications must address either: novel cellular therapies & tissue engineering approaches for the treatment of a specific disease human disease modelling, including as models to identify underlying disease mechanisms, screen for new treatments or enhance preclinical studies	26 Feb 2020	26 Feb 2020	4 Mar 2020
Traumatic Brain Injury (GrantConnect) Between $1M - 2M for grants up to 3 years. Applications must propose innovative diagnostic & prognostic methods that facilitate advances in traumatic brain injury treatment & drive improvements in health & social outcomes for patients after TBI & people around them.	26 Feb 2020	26 Feb 2020	4 Mar 2020
Biomedical Translation Bridge Program Administered by MTPConnect, providing up to $1M in matching funding to nurture the translation of new therapies, technologies and medical devices through to the proof of concept stage. Round two: expressions of interest		28 Feb 2020	6 Mar 2020
Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Development (EPCDR) (GrantConnect) Applicants must propose research that will support the rapid development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, including demonstration of partnerships that will provide access to critical resources necessary to complete the project.		4 Mar 2020	11 Mar 2020
Frontier Health & Medical Research Program A 2-stage program that will provide a total of $570M over 9 years. It will support researchers to explore bold ideas that could have a global impact. Stage one: research plan		5 Mar 2020	26 Mar 2020

Ministerial announcements will frequently precede eventual funding rounds by weeks or months. Wherever possible, such advance alerts will be outlined below:

$3 million for research into medicinal cannabis benefits: to examine the benefits of medicinal cannabis for pain, symptom and side effect management for cancer patients. “An open and contestable grant opportunity” will be available at an unspecified time.

While MRFF processes are distinct to NHMRC or ARC, and peer review does not obligatorily guide Ministerial funding decisions, some MRFF rounds do utilise peer review processes, managed online by either the NHMRC (RGMS) or the Department of Industry, Innovation & Science (Business Portal).

Get involved

For schemes that do undertake peer review of grant applications, University of Adelaide involvement is critical.

Researchers may self-nominate for consideration to undertake peer review for those MRFF schemes which are administered by NHMRC. Self-nomination is only open at certain times and for certain schemes as advertised in the NHMRC Research Tracker.

Once the self-nomination process opens in RGMS there is a 3-4 week window in which researchers can take advantage of this process.

To be considered for appointment to peer review panels for schemes which have already closed to self-nomination, email the NHMRC Research Help Centre an expression of interest which they can then forward to the relevant business area.

Anyone who has volunteered and participated in MRFF Peer Review is urged to contact Dr Cadence Haynes, for University acknowledgement and support.

It is the intention of the Taskforce to:

Capture critical knowledge and information
Share the information with groups/individuals who need to know
Understand the needs of researchers, to help our University better support MRFF applications and activity

Talk to your representative, or contact the MRFF Opportunities Manager for more information.

Member	Role/Representing
A/Prof Mathias Baumert	Theme Leader – Medical, Health and Bioprocessing Technologies, ECMS
A/Prof Michael Beard	School of Biological Sciences Research Committee chair, and representative for the Research Centre for Infectious Diseases
Prof Alex Brown	Theme Leader, Aboriginal Health Equity, SAHMRI and Adelaide Medical School
A/Prof Gustavo Carneiro	Professor of Computer Science
Prof Józef Gecz	Adelaide Medical School Research Committee chair
Prof Bronwyn Gillanders	DDR Faculty of Sciences – also represent human health-related Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Agriculture Food and Wine and Physical Sciences
Prof Gillian Harvey	Adelaide Nursing School Research Committee
Prof Tim Hughes	Precision Medicine Theme Leader at SAHMRI; Cancer Council Chair in Cancer Research and Consultant Haematologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Prof Mark Hutchinson	Director of the Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics
Prof Mark Jenkinson	Professor of Neuroimaging at the University of Adelaide, SAHMRI, Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), and the University of Oxford
Prof John Lynch	Interim DDR Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences School of Public Health
A/Prof Anna Ma-Wyatt	School of Psychology Research Committee chair
A/Prof Peter Psaltis	Cardiologist with Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN); Deputy Leader of the Heart Health Theme and Co-director of the Vascular Research Centre at SAHMRI.
Prof. Sarah Robertson	Director, Robinson Research Institute
Dr. Nick Smith	Paediatric Neurologist at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital
Mr Steve Whetton	Deputy Director - South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, representing Health Economics
Dr Peter Zilm	Adelaide Dental School Research Committee chair

Need help?

Complete our simple Google Form to flag your interest in MRFF support, or to nominate your colleagues with expertise across the MRFF Priority areas.

For further information please contact our MRFF grant manager.