Diabetes Research Connection

The Diabetes Research Connection is a nonprofit that connects donors directly with early-career scientists, funding peer-reviewed type 1 diabetes research vetted by its own scientific review committee. It was founded in 2012 by Alberto Hayek, a longtime diabetes researcher at UC San Diego, and the attorney David Winkler, who lives with type 1 diabetes. The researchers C.C. King and Nigel Calcutt and the writer Amy Adams, whose son has the disease, joined them. The idea grew out of Hayek's frustration, after three decades in the field, that the boldest early-stage ideas were the hardest to get funded. It grants up to 75,000 dollars per project and has awarded more than 4.1 million dollars across 87 projects, seed money that has driven far larger follow-on funding. Ten of its funded scientists have gone on to establish or lead their own type 1 diabetes research labs.

Location

Del Mar, California, U.S.

Founded

2012