SCTC Travel Awards & Kao Family Foundation SCTC Young Investigator Travel Awards

The SCTC is pleased to announce that the following were successful in their application for: 

SCTC Travel Awards

• Carlos Gomes
• Carlos Rangel-Peláez
• Fenglin Wu
• Sandra Maribel Lopez Garces
• Annalisa Villa
• Cristiana Sieiro Santos
• Antonio Tonutti
• Minrui Liang
• Blaz Burja

Kao Family Foundation SCTC Young Investigator Travel Awards

• Hilde Jenssen Bjørkekjær
• Alexandru Micu
• Corrado Campochiaro
• Laura Much
• Marco Minerba
• Gaurav Kansagara
• Ifeoluwa Emmanuel Bamigbola
• Philip Yee
• Begonya Alcacer-Pitarch
• Panagiotis Garantziotis

As a result of the generosity of the Kao Family Foundation, as from 2025 ‘Kao Family Foundation SCTC Young Investigator Travel Awards’ will be awarded each year to up to 10 young investigators. The aim of these awards is to provide young investigators with the opportunity to attend either the International Workshop on Scleroderma Research or the Systemic Sclerosis World Congress (depending on the year of application) and the American College of Rheumatology Annual meeting, including attendance at the SCTC Annual General Meeting. The monetary value of each award is up to $7,500.  Awards are made on the basis of the quality of abstracts submitted to the International Workshop on Scleroderma Research or the Systemic Sclerosis World Congress: it is a requirement of the awardee to present an abstract.

Those eligible to apply are as follows:

1. 1. Clinical fellows;
   2. Junior attendings (clinicians) that are in the 1^st or 2^nd year of practice at the time of application;
   3. PhD students; and
   4. Postdoctoral researchers who are in the 1^st or 2^nd year of research since receiving their PhD at the time of application

In addition, the applicant must be the first (as well as presenting) author of the abstract. Therefore, only one author per abstract may be considered for the award. In any given year, an individual institution is allowed only one awardee. Applicants are only able to be selected for a Travel Award once.

The SCTC is indebted to the Kao Family Foundation for providing this opportunity to young clinicians and scientists to present their work and to network with junior and senior colleagues interested in systemic sclerosis.