Leigh Jones: Developing future leaders across South-East Asia

My name's Leigh Jones. I'm the Regional Academic Training Leader for MORU and OUCRU. My line of work is developing researchers. So specifically developing the research leaders, future research leaders for South and Southeast Asia.

An example of a recent programme that I've been working on is the MORU OUCRU Discovery Research Academy, or MODRA for short. This programme was designed to address the challenges that early to mid-career researchers face, at the difficult stage in their career where they're transitioning to independence. So, we recognise specifically in our region that, as well as that being a tricky stage for every post-doc and new independent researcher, we're in an ecosystem that's quite different. There's sometimes a lack of research infrastructure, limited research institutions, sometimes lack of mentorship, transferable skills training, things like grant writing for example which is really important, and mentorship, which is really, really crucial. So, we developed MODRA, an 18-month programme which encompasses training, mentorship, and seed award funding, to provide early to mid-career researchers an opportunity to gather preliminary data and develop skills to take them closer to submitting applications for international grant funding.

The biggest challenge in my line of work is the changing research funding landscape. It was always difficult for researchers, particularly in South and Southeast Asia, to be competitive for grant funding. It's becoming even more difficult with the reduction in funding bodies, particularly from the US, and it is putting more pressure on the funders that are available to us for obtaining money to support health research in our region. So, it's even more important to ensure that our researchers are provided with the support and training that they need, to really help them be as competitive as possible.

My work makes a difference to individual researchers, particularly relating to the programmes we have for PhD studentships for example, but especially for the MODRA programme where we're supporting early to mid-career researchers. The idea is we really need to support local leadership in our regions. And by supporting local competitive leaders, it means an improvement in research capacity within the region, and then subsequently an improvement on human health because that's what all of our research is aiming towards.

My line of work matters because we need local leaders in South and Southeast Asia to drive forward excellent research. It needs funding to support that. So, both for PhD studentships, but then also beyond, to programmes like MODRA where we take researchers through that early to mid-career phase, and provide them with seed awards to help them to do their research, and take them to the next level of submitting international grant application.

This interview was recorded in September 2025.