2022 Prize Winner

This year’s prize was awarded to Dr Aravind Ganesh from the University of Calgary. Dr Ganesh's research is titled: Developing a Free Market to Drive Potential Donor Engagement and Long-term Investment in Medical Research/Innovation

“I am thrilled to be named the 2022 Panmure House Prize winner. This tremendous honour will help drive our research on the real-world performance of our novel platform, LET'S GET PROOF for funding medical research that involves a precision approach to crowdfunding guided by an open, dynamic peer-review system. I dedicate this prize to my co-applicants Dr Mayank Goyal, Dr Aidan Hollis, Dr Rosalie McDonough, and Dr Johanna Ospel, as well as the rest of our team at Collavidence.com, without whom this project would be impossible. Thank you to the judges for your trust and acknowledgement of the importance of this potentially transformative work.”

Research title: Developing a Free Market to Drive Potential Donor Engagement and Long-term Investment in Medical Research/Innovation

Medical research and innovation play a crucial role in improving our healthcare and wellbeing. However, there has been little growth in investment in the funding of medical research. Donors who help fund medical research, including taxpayers, currently have little engagement in the process of selecting research projects to be funded, and struggle to understand the impact achieved by these projects. This has been brought into sharp focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which incredible strides in medical research (like vaccinations) have been met with distrust. Directly connecting members of the public, and philanthropists, to tailored, simplified, and peer-reviewed information about different research projects could help increase their trust in medical research projects and encourage them to invest in research. To do just that, we have launched a new crowdfunding platform, Collavidence.com, aimed at accelerating medical research, with cutting-edge research projects presented in simple language, and an open, dynamic peer-review system to ensure the quality of proposed projects. Over the next year, we will examine the extent to which this platform can engage members of the public in viewing and funding research projects. We will also examine whether projects on LET'S GET PROOF can achieve better funding success rates than traditional grant-funding agencies. This work will provide valuable insights into donor behaviour and the real-world performance of a crowdfunding platform in the medical research/innovation space. These efforts will help promote a “free market” of ideas, democratize and encourage participation in improvement of evidence-based healthcare, and increase long-term investment in medical research and innovation.

Dr. Aravind Ganesh is a Vascular and Cognitive Neurologist. He completed his MD degree at the University of Calgary, followed by a DPhil in Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia as a Rhodes scholar. He earned an Associate Fellowship from the United Kingdom’s Higher Education Academy through his teaching contributions at St John’s College (Oxford). He completed his neurology residency in Calgary, followed by a combined fellowship in stroke and cognitive neurology, funded by Alberta Innovates and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Dr. Ganesh is a Fellow of the Canadian Stroke Consortium, and is actively involved in the development of best-practice guidelines for stroke and dementia care. His clinical research is focused on the natural history, prevention, and treatment of stroke and cognitive impairment. He is passionate about medical education, and serves on the editorial boards of Neurology, Neurology: Clinical Practice, and Stroke.