The John, Margaret, Alfred and Stewart Sim Fellowship provides funding for any graduates in Medicine and Science to research the causes or treatment of depression.
Applicants may request funding for up to three years, with a total cost of up to £115,000, including on-costs and essential research expenses. FEC will not be funded. The College also welcomes applications linking long-term/chronic conditions with depression.
Eligibility
The College is keen that this fund fosters mental health research and the academic careers of early or intermediate researchers. There is no geographical or organisational restriction on the use of funding.
Application and Selection Process
Applications are not currently being accepted. Any updates on when the next application round will open will be posted on this page.
Current recipients:
2019- Dr Filippo Queirazza, University of Glasgow – fMRI signatures of depression and response to antidepressants in first episode psychosis
2019- Dr Laura Lyall, University of Glasgow – Understanding how sleep and circadian rhythm disruption influence depression and comorbidity between depression and cardiometabolic disease
December 2022 update: The role of sleep and circadian disruption in mental health, and particularly in depressive disorders, is increasingly recognised. In this project, machine learning techniques were employed in over 60,000 participants of the UK Biobank to examine a) whether detailed data on sleep/circadian characteristics is useful in predicting depression-related outcomes, and b) which specific sleep/circadian features are most important. The sleep/circadian data provided reasonable discrimination of depression vs. controls, and of atypical vs. typical depressive symptoms, and across most models, the most important predictors were: difficulty getting up, insomnia, snoring, and duration of daytime inactivity. Results suggest these measures may be useful in identifying patients at risk of worse depression outcomes.
In the next studies, I will examine the combined influence of depression and sleep/circadian disruption on a) brain structure and its age-related decline; and b) cardiometabolic diseases including hypertension and diabetes. I will also examine the extent to which combining sleep/circadian, neuroimaging, genetic, and sociodemographic data can predict those at higher risk of depression, using machine learning models.
2017-20 Dr Calum Moulton, King's College London - Cognitive and somatic subtypes of depression in type 2 diabetes: comparing their correlates, associated complications and targets for treatment
2017-20 Mr Joey Ward, University of Glasgow - Towards precision medicine for depressive disorders
2018- Dr Sameer Jauhar, King's College London - A PET study of psychotic depression, and comparison to other psychotic illnesses
2018-20 Dr Ally Rooney, University of Edinburgh - Comparing the behavioural, functional, cellular, and molecular consequences of single, versus repeated, electroconvulsive shocks
Previous recipients:
2015-18 Dr Heather Whalley, University of Edinburgh - Neurobiology of Depression: Stratified by Genetic Loading for Schizophrenia
2005-2009 Dr Ben Pickard – Investigating the NPAS3 gene, a candidate for genetic susceptibility to depression
1999-2003 Dr Gerome Breen – Pharmacogenics of Lithium Response in Affective Disorders
1999-2002 Dr David Brown – Elucidation of the molecular effect of serotonin (5HT) upon hippocampal neurones and its relevance to depressive illness
Further Information
Please contact standards@rcpe.ac.uk
