Medical Research Funding
Christopher Rovin graduated from Marquette Senior High School in 2006, but he’s been around medical labs for many years.
His father, Marquette General neurosurgeon Dr. Richard Rovin, helps run the Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center.
Chris says his dad’s experience has helped him learn about the funding difficulties small labs face, and he says those difficulties are often linked to the reputation of the lab or an inability to compete with larger labs for grant money.
The WeSearch Foundation, which he and Guillaume Curaudeau founded last year, will address that.
It pools sums of money donated by many people towards specific medical research causes.
And donors don’t need to have much money to help.
Curaudeau says the smaller projects they’re looking to fund at the moment require $1,000 to $2,000, so donations as small as $5 from a number of people will help quite a bit.
Chris and Guillaume live in Ann Arbor, but the projects WeSearch is currently trying to fund are all in the U.P.
They include a concussion test iPhone app designed to help athletic coaches and trainers.
Guillaume says the Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center is behind several of WeSearch’s current projects.
The potential market is enormous — Chris says the National Institutes of Health only fund about one-sixth of the projects that apply to it for funding, and it’s the largest medical research funding source in the business.
That leaves thousands of projects searching for funding each year, and WeSearch may help many of them find it.
If you want more information on WeSearch, or if you want to donate a few dollars to it, you can visit WeSearch’s website.
Posted by: Mike Hoey