Annual Review 2012: Focus area 1 - Supporting outstanding researchers

We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.

In this year's ‘Annual Review’, you can read about the Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research in Newcastle, where researchers are developing IVF techniques to stop children inheriting mitochondrial diseases. Other activities this year included a Strategic Award for a technique that vastly enhances the sensitivity of MRI, the ongoing success of our Investigator Awards, recognition for Trust-funded scientists who are reducing the use of animals in research and a new fellowship scheme to support scientists at an early stage of their career who have the potential to become world leaders.

Further resources

Here are links to information relating to each of this year's 'Annual Review' stories in focus area 1:

Mitochondrial research (page 9)

• Press release: New £5.8 million Wellcome Trust centre
• Newcastle University: Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research
• Feature: Out of the shadows

Making MRI more sensitive (page 10)

• University of York: Centre for Hyperpolarisation in MRI
• University of York: Professor Simon Duckett

Expanding investigations (page 10)

• About Investigator Awards
• Investigator Award recipients

Reducing animal use (page 10)

• News: Prizes for reducing use of animals in research
• National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs)
• Wellcome Trust blog: Q&A with NC3Rs chief executive

Research leaders of the future (page 11)

• Press release: First Sir Henry Dale Fellows
• About Sir Henry Dale Fellowships
• Nobelprize.org: Sir Henry Dale biography

Image: Mitochondria (red) around the nucleus of a kidney cell. Credit: University of Edinburgh/Wellcome Images