International recognition for Monash researchers' data science skills
GCRFF award winning team L-R: Prof Dominique Cadilhac, Eric Kuo, Dr Muideen Olaiya, Dr Lachlan Dalli, Prof Monique Kilkenny
A team of researchers from Monash University have won a prestigious international award and a US$20,000 prize for their work analysing global research funding data for cardiovascular disease.
Competing in the Global Cardiovascular Research Funders Forum (GCRFF) Data Challenge, the team analysed over 200,000 research grants from major international funders. Using cutting-edge machine learning methods, the researchers from the Stroke and Ageing Research Group, Dr Lachlan Dalli (Project Lead), Mr Tzu-Yung (Eric) Kuo (Data Scientist – Main Analyst), Professor Monique Kilkenny, Dr Muideen Olaiya , and Professor Dominique Cadilhac uncovered key trends and gaps in how heart disease research is funded. The team fulfilled their objectives of the Data Challenge by producing several tangible outputs for funders to demonstrate the impact of different grants, as well as evaluating trends in funding allocation over time. Their findings could help guide future investments in heart disease and stroke research, especially in areas that need more attention to tackle the growing global impact of cardiovascular diseases.
The project involved data from 11 major funders for cardiovascular disease including the National Heart Foundation of Australia, American Heart Association, British Heart Foundation, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Danish Heart Foundation, German Centre for Cardiovascular Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Leducq Foundation, National Heart Foundation of New Zealand, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH), and the Swiss Heart Foundation.
Lead researcher, Dr Lachlan Dalli said, “Our advanced data analysis uncovered key gaps in global funding for cardiovascular research. These insights will help funders worldwide to direct their investments more strategically – towards the areas where they can make the biggest difference. We’re teaming up with major heart research funders to put our data tools to work – making it easier to see where funding goes, what it achieves, and how it can do even more for communities.”
Tzu-Yung (Eric) Kuo said “this project allowed me to apply advanced machine learning techniques to extract meaningful insights from complex datasets. By structuring and refining the raw data, I was able to uncover new patterns in the grant funding data that were previously unknown.”
References:
- American Heart Association
- British Heart Foundation
About Monash University
Monash University is Australia’s largest university with more than 80,000 students. In the 60 years since its foundation, it has developed a reputation for world-leading high-impact research, quality teaching, and inspiring innovation.
With four campuses in Australia and a presence in Malaysia, China, India, Indonesia and Italy, it is one of the most internationalised Australian universities.
As a leading international medical research university with the largest medical faculty in Australia and integration with leading Australian teaching hospitals, we consistently rank in the top 50 universities worldwide for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences.
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