Imperial College London, consistently ranking among the world’s top ten universities, is an internationally focused, world-leading institution. Imperial continues to push the frontiers of research, life changing education, and transformative innovation. Its academic strategy is aimed at delivering transformative impact for societal benefit on a global scale.
Conserving the world’s biodiversity and natural ecosystems is an immensely complex task. It involves the conservation of various habitats, the protection of endangered species, and an understanding of the interconnectedness of the world’s ecosystems, as well as the means we already have, or could devise, for addressing this issue.
Addressing this issue requires constant learning, adaptation, and breakthroughs in academia, technology, policy, and practice. But there are still many data gaps and knowledge limitations – our understanding of the problem and its solutions is still incomplete.
There is also a lack of sufficient funding for global conservation efforts. Funding shortages are hindering progress and experimentation – this is especially true in the case of higher risk projects that have the potential to generate transformative breakthroughs. Philanthropists and other funding providers are too risk averse because, naturally, they want assurance of positive impact when providing funding. This is holding back progress.
In partnership with Imperial College London, the Turner Kirk Trust Sprint Challenge was established to bring together conservation scientists and mathematicians from Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy, Department of Life Sciences, and Department of Mathematics.
The rolling challenge is designed to foster high-risk/high-gain activities at the intersection between conservation and mathematics to address unsolved and complex global conservation challenges. At each round, applications to the fund are invited to propose creative ideas and approaches for tackling issues in this space.
The Challenge is focused on facilitating highly experimental projects that would normally struggle to attract funding, generating the potential for a significant breakthrough in tackling global conservation problems.
The first round of the Sprint Challenge took place in 2023, with three successful teams receiving combined funding of £50,000 from the Turner Kirk Trust to run their projects for a ‘sprint’ period of six months.
All three projects completed successfully in six months, and presented their findings to the Turner Kirk Trust and leading departmental academics at Imperial. You can read more about the outcomes of their projects and hear directly from their lead researchers in this article.
The second round of projects got underway in 2024, and their results will be available upon completion.
"By funding three teams to complete short-term projects that would otherwise struggle to gain funding, because they are too risky or experimental, we’re creating the opportunity for a breakthrough in our fight against biodiversity loss. But, most importantly, all the projects being funded have the permission to fail – if they fail, we’ve still learned something, and being open to failure is integral to experimentation."
In collaboration with The University of Glasgow, the project aims to develop the evidence needed to produce a transformative method for improving children’s ability across STEM subjects, independent of background or birth.
A child protection programme that aims to develop a replicable model for preventing harmful institutionalised care, in favour of family-based care.
An innovative pilot project by SolarAid to provide solar lights to every household in an off-grid village in central Malawi, aiding their mission to light up all of rural Africa by 2030.
The University of Cambridge and the Turner Kirk Trust have launched the Kirk Global Challenge, a competition designed to jump-start economic growth in the developing world.
A new global fellowship programme at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative to protect biodiversity and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
A new student-led research programme to develop new unmanned aerial vehicles to fight back against climate change and poaching, funded by the Trust.