How does an investment in hope drive the next big medical breakthrough?
Just ask UTS researchers Dr Jiao Jiao Li and Dr Gang Liu.
Drs Li and Liu are the proud recipients of two 2025 Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellowships from the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation. These fellowships, which each provide $1 million in philanthropic funding over five years, support outstanding early career researchers to pursue medical innovations and a long-term research career.
Dr Li, who is based in the UTS School of Biomedical Engineering, will apply her funding to the creation of new regenerative therapies for joint diseases like osteoarthritis. One of her projects is on the use of stem cells as ‘bio-factories’ to produce new treatments that reduce inflammation and promote healing in diseased joints.
Dr Liu, a senior lecturer in the UTS School of Life Sciences, will explore how and why people develop idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is an incurable disease that causes irreversible scarring on the lungs. Using advanced AI and molecular research techniques, Dr Liu is seeking to develop novel therapies that will improve patient outcomes.
Collectively, their work has the potential to benefit hundreds of millions of people worldwide by improving quality of life and life expectancy for those who live with these conditions.
But the road to this sort of innovation is not always smooth – securing research funding can be a highly competitive and time-consuming endeavour. The Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellowships demonstrate the power of philanthropy to keep researchers working towards game-changing outcomes that have the potential for global impact.
“As researchers, we often spend significant periods of time writing grant applications to secure financial support, which means we miss out on valuable research time that would otherwise be dedicated to solving health care challenges,” Dr Liu says.
Philanthropic support like the Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellowship lets us focus our efforts on the work at hand.
Dr Jiao Jiao Li says, “We are indebted to the Rebecca L. Cooper Foundation, not only for their generosity but for their belief in what we do. We are truly grateful for the opportunity to leverage the fellowship in reaching the broader community to communicate the impact of our work and promote the importance of medical research.”
UTS Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andrew Parfitt, congratulated Drs Li and Liu on their funding success.
“Meeting the healthcare challenges of the future needs solutions that bring together innovative thinking from many different fields. Jiao Jiao and Gang’s research sits at the forefront of innovation and technology to improve the lives of thousands of Australians,” he says.
He expressed thanks to the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation that is empowering these possibilities for healthcare with their philanthropic support.
Image caption: Dr Jiao Jiao Li is a proud recipient of the Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellowship, supporting her medical research in regenerative therapies for joint diseases.
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